Welcome to the Jungle
by Louise24601
Summary: When Sara decided to run for President, she refused to change to fit the profile: no husband, no family, because why couldn't a single woman have something decent to say? But then, falling in love with a volunteer from one of her charity programs wasn't part of the plan. AU. Mi/Sa. Rated T for swear words and sexual situations. The title is from Guns and Roses.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Newcomer

 **AN** : A lot of thanks to MissBastique who gave me the outline for that story. I really, really got into it so I'm grateful as hell. Now, as to technicalities: before people tell me this story's implausible, yes, I take full responsibilities for it. Presidents can't be under 35 and I made Sara 29, which is her age in the show. My knowledge on politics is as limited as anyone's who's used Google as their main resource (and I'm not even an American so I'm probably even more clueless than most people who will read this). What I wanted was to enjoy myself creating an entertaining and feminist story, which I believe is in the range of any fan-fiction writer. While I think about it, I'm going to be calling C-Note "Benjamin" in this fic, because… well, you know, it'd be a little strange to call him C-Note. That's long enough for an introduction. Let me know if you enjoy this.

…

"Power politics is the diplomatic name for the law of the jungle"

Ely Culberston

Most people who come from a family of politicians get in the business to follow into their parents' footsteps, but for Sara it had been the exact reverse.

Even at a young age, she could remember that burning pit of outrage in her stomach, discovering her father embodied everything she thought was wrong with the world. _America needs stronger borders and fewer immigrants_. _Refugees are no more our burden than any other country's_. _And we need to be tougher on criminals_ , _show the scum of our land that we mean business_. _Am I in favor of the death penalty? Let me answer that by a quotation: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image."_

How many arguments had there been, when she was barely a teenager, "But dad, how can we deny access to these people when our military is _bombing_ their countries?"

And his never-changing answer, "You'll understand when you're older."

If anything, Sara's promising career in politics had started only to prove him wrong on this. When she'd started out – first running for Mayor and then Governor, she'd been advised not to throw her father under the bus. "Americans love a big and loving family. You don't have to stand for the same things your father does – just try to be respectful of his politics."

To which Sara had answered with a defiant smile. "Maybe it's time for a change, time we all start standing up against our forefathers and questioning their decisions. I won't be what's expected of politicians just to be elected – I'll be elected because people want someone new, someone honest. Not the polished lies, the white-picket fence and the nice family. Not any of that. I'll give them something that matters."

Her advisor had sighed unashamedly. "Well, Sara, I'd love to tell you that's a nice way to get elected – but really, it's rather a nice way to get assassinated."

Maybe that was true. Sara wasn't blind to the risks. Really, she'd never expected she'd get so far as she was now, not because she didn't believe in herself or what she was saying. But she _was_ a single woman who wasn't yet thirty, and single women – when they're public figures – are basically anomalies. Probably, she'd thought people would be too busy speculating on her private life to take her seriously. Was she homosexual, was there something wrong with her that no man would marry her, was she a frigid woman? Oh, she'd heard them all, and had _forced_ herself not to get used to it, not out of a masochistic streak but because she never wanted the fire in her veins to die out, to stop being at war against injustice.

She didn't think the world was _ready_ for what she had to offer. But there'd been enough success along the way to make her consider she may be wrong. A thrill of hope goaded her forward, the hope that she could make it, not only head of state but head of _all_ states, all the way to the oval.

Her advisor never said anything about that. It was in the air, as she became more and more popular, as she was reelected Governor last year, and so young, people kept remarking. In the early years, the questions she was asked by the press and talk show hosts were generally oriented at her age or her gender, so that Sara had to ask her assistants to decline all interviews that didn't deal strictly with her political views. Just last week, as she was sitting in the Ed Sullivan Theater in front of Stephen Colbert, after a ten-minute inflamed conversation about the President's condescending attitude towards minorities, Colbert remarked his term was coming to an end in two years' time and _Why don't you run for President in 2020?_ And Sara had heard herself answer, without giving thought to whether it was smart, "Maybe I will."

Of course, she'd gotten half a dozen calls from her advisor, freaking out in his own particular way – that is, not by raising his voice or looking angry but _smoldering_ , to the point you saw smoke when you heard him speak.

"Sara," he said, "do you have any idea how slippery a slope you're on? Do you think America's ready? Do you think _you_ 're ready?"

"Give me some credit, Paul. I'm not making politics into a jesting matter. But I'm curious, of myself and America, which are you less sure of?"

"You know I believe in you."

That she did. Paul Kellerman was the only connection of her father which Sara had kept, the first person she'd actually rallied to her cause. He was one of her father's youngest people when she was just a young adult, and he'd soon become a close friend.

Though she'd never really been able to tell whether he stood by her side because he believed she could change the world, or because he just thought she was the last politician in the country it made sense to stand by, she'd known from the first that his loyalty would not waver. Paul just wasn't the wavering kind.

"Please," he said, on the phone, that evening after she'd said goodbye to Stephen Colbert and waited for her cab to drive her to the airport. "Tell me if we're doing this, we're going to be smart. I'm not mad because you told America you'd run for President, Sara. You want to be President, I'll make you President. I just wished you'd _asked_ me, that I could think of how to make it happen –"

"I don't _need_ you to think for me, Paul." She interrupted, not sharp but firm. "And just so it's clear: I'm not going to _preen_ myself into a candidate. I'm not going to take a husband or dress more threateningly, I'm not going to take pictures that'll fashion me as a feminine icon wielding manly power. People are always going to ask me to _smile_ more and talk about what I wear, it'll snow in hell when I can stop them talking, so I won't waste my efforts. You know what I will do? My job."

She hung up without adding a word, leaving her friend to simmer with rage and impotence. He'd calm down and tomorrow they could have a serious talk.

…

As time passed, Sara was true to her word: doing her work, unperturbed by her announcement. There was still time – a lot of time – before she was due to start campaigning. When she'd become Governor, she'd refused to give up charity work and she didn't see why shooting for the presidency would change that. Of course, by now, Sara was running a few programs herself, but that wasn't the same job at all – throwing fundraising events, trying to offer rich people a good time and patting them on the back so they'd agree to disentangle from a tiny fraction of their fortune and feel better about themselves for the rest of the year. These were the only occasions when Sara was willing to wheedle and boot-lick, when she drank champagne and laughed politely with people who made the hairs in her neck bristle. The things you'd do for a good cause.

But now and then, she liked to go back to actual charity work, become just a volunteer among others for the space of a few hours. _Feed the Homeless_ was her favorite, because she'd started going there when she was only fourteen, and she knew everyone there, basically thought of them as a second – what the hell – a _first_ family.

She drove to the food bank, after having preciously saved a few hours on her Saturday. It was good seeing the team again, Brad, Benjamin, Charles – she'd always had a soft spot for Charles, who was already old when she first came here and whose elderliness now looked _immortal_. Early on, she'd learned he was the one who'd been here the longest, which didn't surprise her. Something was inherently kind about him, how he spoke and smiled. When she came here, fourteen years old, he took to calling her 'my little one', and he sometimes still did, when the time was right.

"How are you doing, Sara?"

"Great. Busy. Tired. You know how it is."

"I don't, and I've no wish to." She chuckled, and he continued. "It's enough involvement just to follow your progress in the news – it's about as far as I'll go. You must forgive an old cynic like me."

"Right," she said, knew he was teasing. Because cynics often find regular time for charity work.

He didn't remark on her announcement about running for President. It was nice, talking about other things.

"So," she said, "what's new here?" She asked as a matter of formality. The food bank was generally as unchanging as they come.

"Well," it was Benjamin who answered, "we've got a newcomer."

"Really? A regular?"

"Twenty hours in the past two weeks."

Some volunteers came and went, but it was rare someone actually added themselves to their regular team. Though twenty hours in two weeks indicated some commitment, possibly it'd exhaust itself in no time.

"A very nice chap," Charles said when she looked back at him. "He talks well, but he doesn't talk much. Does the job without complaining, without asking many questions. Friendly enough." He shrugged. "If he's here to stay, I won't be disappointed."

Sara nodded. In truth, it felt a little strange, picturing a new face here – the team had been together for so long, it was like she'd forgotten it could change at all.

"Well," she said, "if that's the case I'll see him around, one of these days."

"You can see him now," Charles answered. "He's in the back, packing food orders. It's been a while since you've been in the back, why don't you come help. I'll introduce you."

It was a quiet afternoon, not many volunteers, so she knew the newcomer immediately. He stood out first because he was a head taller than everyone working. Thirty-something, with hair cropped very short, and when he looked up at her she saw his eyes were blue as robin's eggs. Yes, you could tell from the beginning, that they were good eyes, would do a lot for him. Sara wished back a time when she felt she could trust people after just one look.

The thing was, when you'd been inside the circle of politics, you'd be looking even people you met outside of it a different way, with different eyes. You could get out of the jungle but not take the jungle out of you.

"Michael," Charles said to the young man. "Meet one of our old-timers."

There was that flash of recognition in his eyes that hinted he either watched TV or read the press frequently enough to know who she was. Suddenly, he looked awkward – you could tell he wasn't used to it – looked like a student when no one's warned him about an exam or a special guest.

Sara was glad Charles laughed before she could say something. With time, you learned to shove your own awkwardness down the back of your throat behind an immaculate smile, but she shared the newcomer's feelings, all the same.

"Don't stop working or anything, son. She's not here to give a speech, there're no cameras."

"Please, Charles." She hated when he made her sound like the team's celebrity.

"She's just here to help out. Like I said, Sara's an old timer."

He shoved her forwards and left them to it. After giving the young man a polite, confident-but-not-arrogant smile – the smile was essential, you could not mess it up – she stood beside him and started sorting food.

Though she was sure ninety percent of politicians didn't have much of it, empathy was an important gift to have in this line of work. If anything, Sara's was too sharp, overly developed and sensitive. Say anything you want about her, she could read a room better than most. Right now, she sensed as the young man tamed his surprise, leaving place to an odd numbness – it was more than just being shocked because you realized the people you see on television actually exist outside the screen.

He admired her. She could tell, in his very silence, he would say nothing that might sound too familiar or disrespectful. Probably, if she hadn't spoken to him first, they'd have been eternal strangers to each other.

"So, you've been coming here for a long time?" An easy question, pretending Charles hadn't told her.

When she did get him talking though, he sounded much at his ease. "No, just a few weeks. I did some volunteer work to the foodbank in Springfield. My brother and I just moved to Chicago."

"Will we be seeing him around here?"

He chuckled, keeping his eyes focused on his work. "No, I don't think so. My brother's not –" How should he put this? "He's not very good at helping people."

There was an edge to his tone that suggested he didn't think he was so good at helping them either.

They didn't talk much, that afternoon. It was a quiet few hours of work – eventually he'd ask her where he should put a certain item, but nothing in the range of personal exchange.

She had to head out early, before they started serving dinner. Paul would be waiting for her at her office at six o'clock.

"You're leaving?" Michael asked her.

"Unfortunately. I wish I could stay longer. You're doing fine, you'll be okay on your own."

Michael was silent for a moment. The early awkwardness had evaporated and this was something different, stronger. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Did you mean what you said the other night, that you'd run for President?"

Sara smiled. "I rarely say things I don't mean, especially on television."

He gave a quiet nod. He looked more serious than she'd expected. "Good. I mean, I'm happy you meant it. This country needs someone different. Someone like you. It's been too long since anyone in power really wanted things to change."

Amused, she lowered her eyes – with her smile and just the long curls of her lashes masking her gaze, he thought she looked extraordinarily different from what he'd seen of her in the press. It had never occurred to her to _think_ she was beautiful, when he was too busy finding it strange that someone in this country would finally say sensible things.

"Well, why don't you join the world of politics," she retorted, half-joking. "Luck helps, I've got to be honest, and money helps more, but sometimes it's just about wanting to make a difference."

The smile he gave her was honest but grim. "I'd rather work from the shadows."

She couldn't blame him.

They said goodbye, having almost cleared out their initial awkwardness, and Sara drove to her office feeling oddly shaken. Sometimes, she thought she missed the shadows herself. Becoming a politician while standing against what most of them represented was a little like embracing martyrdom. Accepting that your life would be placed under the scrutiny of the whole world, having your every habit and thought dissected on a surgical table.

Seeing larger than yourself, being the change you wanted to see in the world.

That was all very well. That was the jungle.

And yet, hearing that near-stranger speak of the _shadows_ , Sara thought – could hardly remember – how pleasant those must be, how peaceful.

Maybe she could actually make it to the presidency, so long as she could still visit the food bank, safeguard some fragment of privacy, the survival of her shadow-self.

 _Maybe Michael Scofield can be my shadow-friend_ , she thought despite her will.

Even as time would pass, she could never think of a righter thing to call him.

…

 **End Notes** : Please share your thoughts. I'd love to know where you think things will go.


	2. In The Shadows

Chapter 2: In the Shadows

When you start keeping a secret you don't immediately realize it'll _become_ a secret. _You just think, I'll keep this quiet for a while, see how things go_. And so had Sara. If she started dating now, just now, a few months after she'd announced her intention to run for President, people would have no choice but to read it as a political move.

They'd say: 'Of course, a single woman couldn't make it in the world of politics.'

Putting a woman in the oval was hard enough, but without a man to normalize her, to make her desirable, domestic, and so feminine, how could she be taken seriously at an election?

Sara had made it on her own so far and intended to make it a lot farther. Already, Paul was working on fashioning her image as defying the usual standards of candidates. _New_ was the keyword. Same game, new rules, new expectations, new winner.

This was what Sara wanted. Elected or not, she wanted to do it her own way.

And how could she possibly drag Michael into this, Michael who hated the spotlight and all that came with it, scrutiny, attention, Michael who belonged in the shadows?

The regular volunteers at the food bank were probably the only ones to know. Charles, Benjamin, and Brad – nice, awkward Brad who still lived with his mother, who'd hated himself for not making his move on Sara before she became unreachable, a political icon, and who, after watching her romance with Michael invisibly blossom, probably hated himself more.

Some things happen even when you make every effort to stop them, when you desperately will your body to run the other way.

Their hands brushing when they were packing food in the back, the dryness in their throats, the heated charge of their silence, when they were momentarily alone, and their proximity felt _electric_ , full of live wires.

When you got to become the youngest and the first female Governor of your home state, you start thinking you've acquired enough willpower to be above certain things. You can keep yourself in check. You can cheat the people around you, keep your feelings to yourself.

But then suddenly you're _not_ Governor, you're not all the things you've achieved over the years, and you're kissing a man, in the back of the foodbank, alone, with nothing but food cans all around, the feel of his tongue brings something in you back to life, something you'd forgotten, or maybe something that never existed until now.

The warm wetness of his lips on hers, goose bumps down her flesh when his hands skimmed the skin of her back, through her shirt, then under, her cheeks flushed with breathless desire.

She'd wanted to say, _We can't_ , to make him stop. Anyone could step in at any moment. It was a quiet enough evening, only Charles and Benjamin left, but they might need something in the back and catch them all the same.

But she didn't say it, didn't stop him or find it in herself to stop, her hands unbuckling his belt, the raspy feel of his scalp rubbing down her stomach.

That's around the time Sara realized just how big, how problematic a secret Michael Scofield was.

And if she hadn't worked so hard to get where she was now, if she didn't believe in serving her country so completely, just for a moment of exhaustion and relief, she might have wanted to stop, to let go of everything.

What stopped her was how much she would hate herself if, after coming so far, she not only gave up, but gave up _for love_ , precisely what was seen as a woman's rightful path and happy ending.

After things had slipped out of control at the food bank, it became clear Sara would have to see Michael someplace else. There was nothing else to do, no hope – no possibility of giving it thought – of never seeing him again, and so Michael became her official secret.

They had this conversation outside, behind the foodbank, where there was nothing but a few parked cars. It was a grey setting, the sky matching the color of the parking lot, which Sara thought was a decent pacifier to make sure the conversation didn't get heated.

But then, she did hate how pragmatic her proposition sounded, not-too-frequent meetings at a hotel room – never the same one – and especially, absolute secrecy, never telling anyone where he was going. Not even Lincoln.

Michael looked at her with an intense earnestness for a moment.

A ridiculous thought suddenly flashed through Sara's brain. _He hates me_. But of course, he only hated their situation, as did she – only she was the one responsible for it.

"And how long would this last?" He inquired. "These precautions?"

No anger in his voice. He didn't raise his tone. He knew her career was important, was really more than a career.

"I don't know." She admitted.

If it had only been a matter of timing, if it was just about people thinking Sara was getting herself a husband, she would have been able to swallow her pride and go past it. Have them think what they will. There would have been plenty of solutions to still go against the typical candidate format. She might have dated Michael and not married him, which would have been scandalous enough.

But there was another, graver reason why Sara couldn't be associated with Michael in particular, and that reason, they both knew, was his brother.

Sara remembered the first time they'd talked about it, remembered the seriousness and devotion in his tone when he'd said – _You're ambitious to want to save the world, Sara. If I could save Lincoln, just Lincoln, that'd be enough for me_.

Lincoln Burrows had been an on and off criminal since he was fourteen. His journey through crime had slowly escalated, from shoplifting to drug dealing and, most recently, armed robbery. Only nineteen when he did his first jail time – three months – then three months again when he was twenty-five, and now, he was incarcerated again, though not for such a short stay. Eighteen months, and in Fox River, too, which explained why Michael had moved to Chicago.

"It's not that he's evil," Michael had told her. "I realize it sounds like I'm making excuses for him, but he's not. Lincoln's been down a road of self-destruction for nearly all his life, and now he feels he's in too deep to backpedal."

"Is he a proud man?"

Michael had sighed. "Yes, there's that. He'd sooner drown than ask for help."

But she could read the guilt in Michael's eyes, as he told this story, so that she knew there was more to it even before he told her all of it – how Lincoln had got in trouble to borrow ninety grand from some drug cartel, and all to send his unaware little brother to college.

Heart of gold or not, Lincoln remained a criminal, disqualifying Michael for the white house even as a boyfriend or potential husband.

Being affiliated with someone like Lincoln was different than Sara's desire to run alone and single. One thing was to prove a point, to stand by a principle, while the other was just bad luck. If her relationship with Michael were official, he would have to make statements, to downright condemn his brother – Justice Frank Tancredi style – or defend him and be forever discredited and distrusted by Sara's electorate.

Suddenly, standing with him in the cold, outside the foodbank, Sara thought she _did_ know how long she and Michael would have to be cautious, not to be seen together. As long as she'd want a political career. As long as she was running for President and for the next four or eight years if she made it.

In her chest, she felt cold and dry, realizing what this would mean, that it went beyond illicit meetings at hotel room. A double life, lying to everyone they knew, all in the sake of a secret commitment to each other, of a romance that might never be allowed to exist in broad daylight.

 _My shadow-friend_ , she thought, without amusement.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have asked."

"Why?" He sounded serious enough. "According to my admittedly limited experience with keeping secrets, I'd say hotel rooms are more discreet than the back of a charity center."

"But I should have thought this through."

"You mean, thought about the future?" Again, he didn't grow angry at the implication that the future for them was black with uncertainty. "Let me guess. Because since we've met, it's been getting harder not to be around each other, and since what happened the other day – you're afraid if it happens again, we might just get in over our heads?"

"Yes."

He smiled. It looked unexpectedly, miraculously boyish. "Sara Tancredi. Are you saying you're falling in love with me?"

She sounded more serious, to make up for his beaming face. "Don't you realize how much trouble this would mean?"

"But are you? No, forget I asked. You shouldn't say it like that. It's not like me to be impatient – that's something you should know about me, Sara, something that should mean a lot right now." He chuckled. "I'm good with patience. I guess I've had all the practice I could hope for with Lincoln."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying yes. Yes to the hotel rooms, yes to the secrets, yes to being with you in the shadows. The sunlight can wait. I'm a patient man. I'm saying I hope you do great things for this country, because you're what it deserves, and I can wait until you've done everything you could for it. I'll wait for you, Sara. As long as you'll need me to."

Though the parking lot was deserted, they were still outside, and the risk of being seen wasn't inexistent. And yet, Sara uttered a sigh of defeat, grabbed his shirt collar and pressed her lips on his.

"You can't tell your brother," she said.

"I know."

"Not anyone."

Of course, it went both ways. She couldn't tell anyone either, especially Kellerman – how furious he'd get if he found out, would probably think of nothing but tearing them apart.

The mere thought sent a shiver to crawl down Sara's body, with a sense of dark foreboding.

Breathless, still tasting him in her mouth, Sara tried to will herself to break their embrace. His hot exhale on her lips. She couldn't resist kissing him one last time.

"Michael Scofield," she said. "You do realize you've completely messed up my plans, don't you?"

"Not completely." He brushed his knuckles against her cheeks. "You're going to become President, Sara, and I'm going to be with you when that happens – just not in plain sight, is all. But like I said, the spotlight was never for me."

…

 **End Notes** : Please let me know what you think, and don't hesitate to give me a nudge if you feel I'm dragging my feet with a story, I'll put it in my priority list ;-)


	3. The Higher You Get

Sara always thought you could tell whether a political opponent took you seriously enough to view you as a threat.

A lot of time had gone by since she'd made that random announcement on television and, probably, some of her to-be rivals were reassuringly convinced that she'd back down. Too young. Too inexperienced. Too out of the box. Sara had stopped counting how many hands she'd shaken, overwhelmingly white and male, belonging to 'important' people, and how she'd known, barely after making eye-contact, that they never expected for her to make it far enough on her own to even have to bother about taking her out.

But the clock was running and – would you guess it? – things were actually looking well for her. Primaries saw her surprisingly nominated for the presidential election. Really, she realized she was a little astonished herself when she became Democrat's official nominee – for the past months, Paul had been rehashing how much it didn't matter, how far they got the first time.

"You could make it in ten years and still become the youngest American president," he said. "No rush, Sara. With every step we're taking, we're always gaining ground."

So when she became a delegate, he was thrilled – she could hear the excitement in his voice, which was rare. Paul was a better liar even than most in the business.

"Let me tell you, Sara," he said, called her immediately, "I've got a bottle of champagne ready to be uncorked. How about some celebration? We can meet again at six tomorrow to start talking strategy again."

Just picturing Paul Kellerman, gloating in his office, with champagne on his desk, was surreal enough that Sara wanted to laugh.

"As tempting as that sounds," she said, was careful to come off as casual, "I'm afraid it'll have to wait."

"Wait?" You could _hear_ his frown in the word. "Did I mention it was a two-hundred-dollar bottle of Dom Perignon? Dom Perignon doesn't wait."

"Sure it does. It's probably decades old already."

Then, immediately, he was back to business, she could sense it even before he spoke, in that two-second scope of silence. "Just tell me if it's serious."

"What?"

"Well, are we talking potential husband or is it just physical? If it's the former, congratulations. It'll reach a larger audience. However, I wish you'd tell me as soon as possible so I can work on a new game."

Sara scoffed. Glad they were talking on the phone, so he didn't have to see he'd managed to shock her. "Paul, let's get one thing straight."

"I'm all for straightforwardness."

"I intend to maintain a private life, even if I do make it to the oval."

Now was as good a time to say it as any. She'd made it sound like it was just a statement that needed making.

"Yes," he agreed. "And if you run it through me, I can make sure it remains as private as possible."

"I meant private _from you_ , as well."

She could picture him blinking, with that impassive look he got when faced with total incomprehension. She could tell it had never crossed his mind before.

"Sara, that's absurd. Do you think Bill Clinton kept it a secret to his advisers that he was having an affair?"

"And they did such a fine job hiding it."

"Well, you're not planning to be the new Clinton, are you?" He sounded serious enough. "Because you should know there's a double standard on men and women and I just don't think I could make it work."

Sara inhaled. Always saying the sentence to yourself before you speak it out loud, when you're angry. "I'm not president yet, Paul. And I'm certainly not Bill Clinton."

"Good. Then I'll see you tomorrow at six."

"That's a little early for champagne, isn't it?"

He didn't laugh. Maybe it wasn't a good time to joke. Yet again, Kellerman wasn't really the kind to indulge in such things as lightness of mood or cheerfulness of spirits.

"Six." She repeated in the end. "Goodnight, Paul."

"Sara?" He said before she could hang up. "Congratulations."

For some reason, the word had an _ominous_ aura, double-edged, as if laden not only with the thought of success, but with the full charge of risk and peril that was headed her way.

…

Making love that night was different, somewhat more intense even than the outstanding standards they were used to. Clawing at Michael's hips to draw him deeper inside her, moaning at the sudden feel of his teeth sinking into her shoulder. By now, she no longer had to give those breathless warnings – _no bitemarks, no hickeys_ – he sometimes actually said it for her, teasingly, as if to lessen the importance they both knew appearances _did_ have, only for the span of a few minutes.

All the while, their bodies tangled in the soft, quality-hotel sheets, Sara was aware of the difference, the increase in ardor.

Tonight, everything, the room around them, this temporary bubble of intimacy, even the pleasure of love-making had this quality of lasts.

 _It won't be exactly like this, from now on_ , she thought. _It won't be as easy_.

A presidential campaign meant a higher level of attention, even more risks of getting caught. Had other presidents needed to sneak a lover into the white house? Would she have to tell Paul eventually?

"Sara?"

The young woman shook the obsessive thoughts from her head. Now that they'd been lying still for a while, she was starting to feel a bit cold, with the blankets pooling at her waist, her upper body exposed. Half-sitting up, Michael was looking at her with an amused – and still a little awed – smile.

She realized he must have asked her something but she had no idea what.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You've got a lot to think about, tonight especially."

"I wish I didn't have to think about it."

He chuckled. The dimple in his cheek proved a momentary distraction.

"It's like you're not even happy about it," he said.

"Happy isn't the word. It means a lot to me that the country would want someone like me for President. It means even more that I might actually have the chance to make some positive changes – it's what I believe in, what I'm meant for." Sara heard herself how factual the words sounded – there should be emotion in her voice, sure enough, the emotion was _there_ , somewhere inside her, but invisible, unreachable. " _This_ is happiness," she said. "You and me, in this room. The thought of myself in the white house is something else entirely. It's two different paths."

He was silent for a moment, his index tracing imaginary lines from her shoulder to her collarbone. She could feel he was looking at her but, for some reason, continued staring vacantly ahead.

"I thought you'd taken me here to celebrate," he said, without sounding resentful. "But maybe that was a little naïve of me. Maybe what you wanted was for us to say goodbye. Was it?"

Sara thought she was going to say _no_ , but realized how much like a lie it would sound.

Of course, this was goodbye.

Maybe not goodbye to their story – putting such an abrupt end to it now would be like cutting off a limb – but goodbye to the relative simplicity of their relationship, hotel rooms once or twice a week, as often as she could afford without anyone getting suspicious, then full hours of unthinkable bliss, their bodies feeding off each other with ravenous need, almost desperate longing.

"I should have seen it coming," he said.

"It's not fair to ask you to bear how much harder it's going to get," she realized.

"Don't talk to me about what's fair."

Sara looked at him in surprise. There was never any anger in his voice – and though this wasn't exactly anger, his eyes were burning and grave.

"Do you have to hear me say it?"

Now, Sara wished she could break away from his gaze, look at anything but those eyes into which she could suddenly read everything, Michael's soul laid bare, holding no secrets from her.

"You don't know," she spoke softly, "what it would be like, if I win. I don't just mean privacy issues. I mean the danger, Michael, because I'm not going to play into the game of lobbyists and big corporations. I'll make enemies. I'll be a _target_."

He sighed, answered his own question. "Okay. So, you have to hear me say it."

"Michael –"

"I don't _care_ how hard it is, Sara. Not anymore. Not for a long time." His tone was firm, unwavering. "If this is what we get, these few hours when nothing else matters, when nothing else _exists_ , I don't care if I have to crawl my way to this room on broken glass."

There was no air in her lungs for her to protest. Michael took her hand. Not thoughtlessly, not like other men had done it before, and looking at her with too much seriousness for her not to get it.

Though there was no ring, though there were no words, this was what he was offering. Himself, his life, his body, everything he was, for as long as she would have him.

"I love you."

Like a helpless bystander, she heard the words cross her own lips.

There was a sudden feeling of _catastrophe_ inside her, a feeling that she'd just done something irreversible, as if she'd spoken a curse.

Michael's hand brushed her knuckles softly.

"Don't ask me to walk away, Sara," he said. "Please. You're about to step into the jungle – don't ask me to watch you go alone. Let me come with you. I know I can't help you in there, and I can't protect you, and it's not about you needing my protection. But when it gets hard, you can always look in the shadows and find me there – ready. You just say the word, and we'll both come out of all the craziness of politics, and there'll be this room for us, waiting."

Sara knew, then, that there was nothing to do but take it, kiss him and push away the thought of consequences yet for a longer while.

 _But where are we headed?_ She thought. _By just kissing him and keeping us both happy – what am I_ really _doing to him?_

…

 **End Notes** : I'm having a lot of ideas for this story, I hope you've enjoyed the chapter. Don't hesitate to leave your thoughts.


	4. The Republican Candidate

It was April 3 when Sara was nominated at the Democratic Party presidential primary. For three weeks, as the Republicans hadn't yet chosen their candidate, the press focused exclusively on her, which Kellerman said they had to view as an opportunity.

"Interviews," he said, the morning after she learned the news, after her celebration with Michael in their hotel room. "Lots and lots of interviews. Talk shows, Sara, conferences. In the following few months, people have to think you're everywhere, that you cover every issue. You don't have to worry too much about women, work on getting other communities. Showing at a pro-choice demonstration protesting the lack of clinics is good, but a picture of you with a group of skinny refugee children would be better."

Sara pinched her lips at Kellerman's suggestions, tried to relax and had a sip of water, struggling to unscrew her clenched jaw.

She hated this sort of talk. It wasn't new to her decision to become President, but there did seem to be so much more of it now.

In truth, though Paul had been the one to help her get where she was now, had been the first person to believe in her, Sara felt if her affection wasn't so secure, if she were to meet him now and this were a stranger saying these things to her, she would dislike him immediately.

Politics was a performance. No denying it. But it wasn't, it shouldn't be, just that. Or what would be the point?

Certainly, Sara wasn't sacrificing a normal life with Michael all for a puppet show.

"That being said," Kellerman went on, "I don't think we should take the women electorate for granted. There's the Me Too movement to consider – I was wondering if you'd thought about taking a stance on that."

"I have. Repeatedly."

"You haven't shared a personal story." He quickly added at Sara's arched brow, "I'm only saying, vulnerability is good in a female candidate. You may not think that's true, but people are distrustful of overly strong women. Just look at what happened to Hillary Clinton. Not smiling enough. Not _genuine_ enough. People are used to politicians being only façades, but it hasn't been proven to work for women. A woman _they don't know_ is dangerous. Whatever could be hiding behind it?" He shrugged. "I'm not making this up, Sara. Hillary was actually called a witch."

"I know that. I _denounced_ that. But I'm not going to make a show of my private life. I'm not going to shed a few tears in front of a camera to reassure people that I'm a _proper woman_."

Kellerman smiled at her anger. Sometimes, it was still hard to tell when he was testing her – impersonating some insufferable journalist just to see what her reaction would be.

"Good." He said. "There're plenty of angles we can work from. I just want a little indication. Until the Republicans elect a candidate, the spotlight's going to be on you. What image should we go with? Ice-queen toughness? Thatcher-style grit? A softer tone, maybe?"

"Me, Paul. We're going with _me_."

He sighed, looking at her very much earnest. "You think I'm bad, don't you? Well, just you wait until you see what candidate the Republicans come up with. Then, see if fighting fair is still an option."

Sara laughed, almost out of despair rather than amusement. "They can't do much worse than the last one."

That turned out to be an inaccurate prediction.

…

Sara knew she was going to dislike the candidate from the first, when she learned that he was calling himself Theodore II.

She was actually with Michael, lying naked under bleach-white sheets, enjoying a cold takeaway dinner – the food was always cold by the time they got to eating it.

They didn't usually turn on the television during their time together, but discovering the Republican nominee was a good enough incentive. At Michael's side, with his hand on her hip, their thighs brushing against each other's, Sara felt less desperate than she would have alone, or even with Kellerman. In the protected haven of the hotel room, it was like the woman who would have to fight against this man wasn't her exactly, had momentarily ceased to exist.

And how sorry Sara felt for that woman.

"Theodore II?" Michael chuckled, too taken with the program to resume eating his Chinese noodles.

"We got a clown for the last election. Now, we're getting a monarch."

Sara meant to sound light, though she wasn't happy at all with her main opponent. Emerging in the world of politics some six years ago, Theodore Bagwell had stood out in the state of Alabama by becoming Senator and giving a strong, sadly popular voice to everything Sara hated about US government. With a pleasant smile and the full force of his southern charisma, Bagwell promoted tougher borders, stricter laws on immigrations, and a pity-proof way of fighting crime – harsher sentences and less hesitation towards capital punishment. "Those who come into our country, take advantage of our Christian hospitality to hurt our women and children, are animals, my fellow citizens. And I won't be lenient to a dog that bites innocent people. In fact, I'll make a fair use of our dear second amendment."

That was another thing he stood for. Guns. More, more, more, no matter how many school shootings, how many teenage protests tried to soften the heart of rich corporations.

Theodore was both different and similar to the last Republican candidate and current President. For one – and Sara admitted that was a difficult standard to meet – she disapproved of him even more. One big and non-negligible difference was that Theodore Bagwell – she refused to consider calling him Theodore II – was _intelligent_. He'd done the smart thing trying to secure conservative voters, basing himself on religion and knowing his business; he could quote just about any part of the Bible on the spot. Not exactly handsome, he was nonetheless extraordinarily charming, not only in the way he smiled to a crowd and managed to make each person think the smile was just for them, but in the way he talked – clever and articulate, but down to earth, and saying what a lot of people wanted to hear.

America for Americans.

Like every promoter of racist policies, redefining the American people as largely white and heterosexual.

He was, to put it differently, everything Sara was not.

"Can you believe they picked him?" Michael sighed. "Senator Bagwell, of all people –"

"It's not a bad choice." Sara remarked. "It's even a safe choice. People like Bagwell are great at making people afraid – making them think the real problems don't exist. Racial inequalities, sexual oppression, hell, global warming. He takes a more pragmatic approach. Makes people feel like immigrants are thirsting after their jobs." She shook her head. "Switch this off. He disgusts me."

Michael complied, smiling softly. "You think you're going to be able to stand meeting him face to face without being sick?"

Again, it didn't really feel like this was really going to happen. While she was there, next to Michael, eating cold Chinese food in bed, she felt completely safe from the craziness of the outside world and the rush of her Presidential campaign.

"Are you kidding?" She said, her brow arched with attitude. Theirs was a rather sarcastic humor. "He won't stand two minutes of debate. I'll eat him up alive."

Michael slid his hand around her naked waist. "I can't wait to watch."

…

 **End Notes** : I'm having so much fun with this story I want to thank Miss Bastique again :D. See you soon with a next update.


	5. First Contact

By the time Sara did meet Senator Bagwell face to face, her initial discovery of his candidacy, at a safe distance, in bed with her boyfriend, was so far from her mind, it might as well have belonged to another woman's life.

The meeting was unofficial enough. No cameras.

 _Good_.

Sara wanted to see the snake behind the surface, Theodore-Bagwell-the-man rather than the politician.

The occasion was a charity dinner in Illinois. Sara just happened to be funding it, and when she learned from Kellerman that Senator Bagwell was in town and would be making an appearance, her reaction was unfiltered – "You're kidding, right?"

"Not kidding," Kellerman answered. "My best guess is, he's trying to give himself a softer image. Competing with you in your own house."

Sara had arched a brow. "He underestimates me."

"Naturally." Kellerman hadn't sounded the least bit surprised. "Theodore Bagwell despises women, Sara." This had taken her off guard a little. Kellerman had explained, "I know his kind of men when I see them. He's been successful winning over women voters despite his conservative policies on abortion, rape, divorce. And he wants to lower the age of sexual consent. Yet women voters make up an important part of his electorate – that makes him condescending, arrogant. Charisma counts for a lot, I'll give him that, but he's mostly winning right-wing traditionalists where women are concerned. Not that that'll make a difference." Kellerman smiled. "If the first time he looks at you, you can't sense from the pit of your soul that the man feels you're beneath him, I'll put on a pink tutu and sing you a little song."

That drew a chuckle out of Sara. "I'd like to see _that_."

But she wouldn't get to because, of course, when she shook hands with Theodore Bagwell at that charity dinner, the malicious scorn in his reptilian eyes was clear as rain water.

"Governor Tancredi," he greeted her with the appropriate formula.

"Senator Bagwell," she replied irreproachably.

Though no cameras were running, though their every word wasn't being aired on live television, there'd be pictures of them shaking hands – the two main candidates meeting on a friendly note, months before the presidential debate.

"I believe you're hosting this," Bagwell remarked, his smile unwavering, and – which meant he enjoyed this – reaching his eyes. "May I congratulate you on this lovely event – it's quite a success."

As if she were a housewife having him over for dinner.

Bagwell still hadn't released her hand – some politicians liked that, showing they were in control, letting you go on their own time. A silent play for domination. Still, her smile never wavered, either.

"You're very welcome," she said.

"If you ever head down to Alabama, I'll be sure to return the favor."

"I didn't know you sponsored charity events."

He met this with a ruthless grin. "I meant I'll be giving you as warm a welcome as you've given me. Do come and see me sometime, Miss Tancredi – it's hot as hell in this season, but a little ruggedness never hurt anyone."

She heard him loud and clear. Still, both of them were smiling, and still, their hands were locked.

"Well, not that that scares me – but as I'm sure you realize, I'm rather busy here."

Senator Bagwell was close enough that she could spot the details generally wiped off by his filming team; an oddly shaped mole beneath his jaw, the red blemishes in his neck where he'd shaved himself too closely. The smell of him was strong, leaving a marking imprint in her nostrils – a light touch of cologne, popular, expensive. The brand was called 'Angel'.

 _Angel_ , she thought to herself, carefully. That wasn't a scent she'd be likely to forget.

"Of course," Bagwell answered, with a shrug that was both polite and charming.

Was he using his charm out of habit, or did he actually think it might work on her – impress her, make her feel out of her depth?

The man _was_ arrogant.

"It's a nice city you have here, Miss. You take good care of it. You and I will see each other again soon enough, in any case – won't we?"

"I suppose so."

Though the feel of his hand was getting moist around hers, Sara never attempted to withdraw – if she did, and he sensed struggle, he would tighten his grip like an iron claw, and for the span of a moment, she would be the doe with her paw caught in the trap and he would be the huntsman.

The wait was long, interminable, but it wouldn't look like it on the pictures printed in the news tomorrow, because they were smiling hard enough to fool the devil. Finally, Bagwell released her hand, and Sara resisted the urge to wipe hers on the material of her black dress.

"You know, I meant to tell you," he said, "I greatly admire a woman so young, bravely climbing up the political ladder. Though I suppose you've already heard this, I'd like to give you a –" His smile broke into an inaudible chuckle, his eyes shiny with excitement. "A friendly warning. It's a world of sharks up there, Miss Tancredi. Just being part of that race is bad enough, but you're trying to end up first – I only think you should consider your career. Your future. There are so many things you could be that would be less daunting – less dangerous."

The pain of remaining impassive.

As a little girl, enduring the torture of family dinners, Sara would scratch the inside of her palm until her fingernails were sunk deep, and the moon-crescent scars were filling up with tiny drops of blood.

"What things, in particular, do you think I could be?"

There was no need for Bagwell to answer. He'd heard, in her tone, refusing to so much as show outrage, that he wouldn't intimidate her into stepping out before the race had started.

What an easy win. Did he really think it would be that simple?

Inwardly, Sara was amused, allowed her smile to be more genuine.

Because he was male and maybe twenty years older than her, did he think she would cower at his threat, that deep down, she would be relieved to run back to her safety zone –

 _Truly_ , Sara thought. _He doesn't think I have it in me_.

"I suppose the problem is," she said, "Senator Bagwell, that you think of politics as a ladder. Rigid, vertical, where the only way it makes sense to go is up."

Softly, he warned, "There _is_ another way to go…"

"But maybe it isn't about climbing and getting more powerful with every notch. Maybe it isn't at all about power. Don't you ever think about that?"

Just as her own smile had become honest, Sara could see the amusement sparkling in Bagwell's gaze. The ambient sound of conversation around them was too loud for anyone to catch their words.

"I don't think even _you_ believe that, honey," he answered, his mask dropping to Sara's victorious approval. "And if you do, all the better. I'll crush you in a second."

"Thank you, Senator Bagwell." Sara concluded calmly. "You've made yourself perfectly clear."

They parted ways, and Sara was in high spirits for what remained of the party. The campaign had barely started and already, Bagwell was starting off with a disadvantage –

She knew exactly what she was up against, whereas he was careless, blinded by prejudice and confidence.

An hour into the evening, Sara excused herself into the bathroom to check her phone. There were two texts, one from Michael and one from Paul. Both were unsurprisingly about Senator Bagwell.

'Any chance he's more likeable than on TV?' from her boyfriend and 'Should I be purchasing a tutu?' from Paul.

Sara chuckled softly, typing a succinct and witty reply to Michael, and leaving Paul to simmer for a few more hours – let him contemplate the thought of himself in a tutu for a while longer. It'd be good for him to have his pride checked, every once in a while.

Then, Sara was ready to step back into the open – all smiles, all showing teeth, not drawing out any claws. Maybe it _was_ a jungle out there. And Senator Bagwell ought to be a little better at choosing his enemies.

…

"What's the verdict?"

The question was asked by Bagwell's closest advisor, as well as his main investor – head of the Italian mob, John Abruzzi, not that the average Joe was supposed to know that. John was officially nothing but an obscenely rich man backing up his favorite candidate. Not that Bagwell had any qualms. If politicians started making sure their financial support always came from clean sources, they'd never gather over a hundred bucks. That was all right for a girl scout selling cookies, but becoming President was rather a different matter, wouldn't you think?

And weren't all games rigged in their own way? How many American Presidents had been backed up by the mob in the past – Kennedy, for sure. And it was old news their current President wouldn't be in the white house right now if it weren't for the Russians.

Besides, Abruzzi didn't really sound or look like an Italian, so it was easy for Bagwell to overlook his regrettable origins. Surely, John was twice as American as those refugees from across the border, coming in through every crack they could find – _This country is full of cracks, ladies and gentlemen_ , _but I'm going to mend it_ , _to cement it back together, into the proud American nation we all know and love_.

Bagwell pondered this briefly. Not bad. He could use it in a speech.

"Well?" John asked again.

Theodore had just met him in the limousine that had been waiting for him outside the party.

"Tedious as I'd expected a fundraising event to be." Bagwell answered, masking a smirk – deliberately toying with his advisor's patience. "Though not a total loss. There was Champagne. Good-looking women in fine dresses."

"The candidate, Theodore." John sighed – he had a rather smoothly _menacing_ way of doing it.

That was enough for Bagwell's half-smirk to morph into a full-blown grin. "A kitten," he commented, allowing for his mind to linger on a mental image of Sara Tancredi. "Soft, and young, and unprepared for battle. My mouth waters just at the thought."

Abruzzi considered this seriously – did not break into a greasy laugh or take part in this assessment. Theodore liked this about his advisor. So many of his cronies were the right people to have fun with, and he might have spent another ten or twenty minutes painting a picture of the astonishingly young – and female – Democrat candidate. But not with John. John was a _thinker_. There was never anything small enough for him to find unworthy of thought.

"Are you sure?" John said.

"Quite sure."

"You tried to see if she would back down, like we discussed?"

"Yes, and she stood her ground. Not strong but defiant. You know how stubborn women are. Probably better that way. Wouldn't have been much of a struggle otherwise, and I do hate an anticlimax –"

"I'm not here to watch you _get off_ on running for President, Theodore." John interrupted. There was no need for him to raise his voice – something about his tone discouraged any reckless response. "I'm here to _make_ you President."

Theodore's amusement turned sour – you could catch a little bitterness in his eyes, but his smile was impeccable. "Much obliged," he said.

When he was in the oval and he didn't need John Abruzzi's money anymore, maybe he'd wage war on the Italian mafia, purge the country of such a deeply-rooted evil. He'd be hailed as a hero for it.

"So let me ask you again," John said patiently, "if you're _absolutely sure_ you can take her on."

"A hundred percent, John." Bagwell answered; he, too, was capable of patience. "I'll make one bite out of her."

…

 **End Notes** : I hope you enjoy this chapter. I'll admit Bagwell's racist/misogynist POV was a little hard for me to get through, but I think it's important in view of the current politics in America and elsewhere concerning women and immigrants. Please leave your thoughts on this chapter and theories about what's next!


	6. Trouble

The AC in Michael's car had stopped working a couple of weeks ago – miraculously, it was just after the worst of a heat wave was over, in the early days of July. Michael had always been very good at fixing things – the only thing he hadn't managed to fix in his parents' house was their marriage – but there had been no time to buy the right pieces or actually replace it. Sara had been so busy with her campaign, it had somehow sucked Michael in as well – of course, he was never going to get involved in her public life, that was a done deal from the start. What Michael hadn't realized was how involved he'd truly be, behind the curtains.

Drinking in every interview, every conference – you never quite get used to watching the woman you love through a TV screen. Before Michael ever started a relationship with Sara – who he used to think of exclusively as Governor Tancredi – he had observed she was remarkably at her ease in front of a camera, taking the full blow of what must be extraordinary stress without wavering, without a nervous tell or, unlike a great majority of politicians, without seeming to wear a mask, without evading embarrassing questions.

Of course, Sara had a public persona – her voice, her way of speaking, wasn't exactly the same as when they were in private. But the difference was slight, a great deal slighter than Michael had assumed was possible for politicians. Sara was an actor, not a liar. At times, gooseflesh actually covered his arms when she heard him address the American people nearly with the same devoted affection as when they were both alone in their hotel room.

 _She cares_ , Michael thought, realized he had always known this. That was what made all the difference between Sara and Bagwell, or Sara and most candidates whose campaign Michael had followed. Sara genuinely cared about the people, about the hopes, fears and expectations she was asking them to share with her.

What an uncanny effect, to watch her denounce war in Syria and the foreign policy of her predecessors, while, just when she tucked a lock of red hair behind her ear, Michael remembered its silken feel beneath his fingers, its strawberry smell when she leaned in to kiss him, seeming to lock them both into a separate world framed by a fiery curtain.

It made Michael feel like he had a secret.

Which he did, undeniably, and he'd never had an occasion to measure how good he would be at keeping it. Michael's everyday activities all started feeling surreal. At work, having a chat with his colleagues, he'd feel extraordinarily focused on keeping the truth in, as if random remarks were going to betray him – did you know Governor Tancredi uses strawberry-shampoo?

If it was hard to keep it from escaping him when he was around coworkers, Michael had trouble devising just how hard it would be to keep it from Lincoln.

It was the middle of July when his brother was released from prison. A few months early, which was good, meant Lincoln had proven himself capable of good behavior. Though it wasn't his brother's first stay in jail, it was the first time he served it in a maximum-security institution – Fox River, of all. As Michael drove there to go fetch his brother, on that fine morning, he found the building quite as impressive as he had the first time he'd visited.

The engineer in him admired its beauty. Somewhat reminding him of a kingdom – locked in on itself and claustrophobic, but still, majestic. A place where the games of power that ran the world of politics didn't disappear.

Michael waited just for a few minutes before he saw Lincoln arrive – it felt good, surprisingly good, to see him wearing regular clothes, and the smile on his face took ten years from his face. Boyish joy.

They hugged each other so hard they had to give up breathing for a few seconds. Even the unusual prison smell his brother gave out didn't manage to taint the magic of their reunion.

"Jesus, Mike." Lincoln grunted, drawing back to take a good look at his face. "You look good."

So did Lincoln – all things considered. "Come on," Michael said, motioning them towards the car. "Let's go home."

…

"For Christ's sake. It's hot as hell in here," Lincoln rolled down all the windows while Michael was driving. "So, why don't you fill me in on what I've been missing? I'll save the prison anecdotes for when we've had a few drinks."

Was Lincoln planning on drinking tonight? Going out?

 _Of course he is_ , Michael's mind answered for him. He hadn't seen a woman in over a year, and Michael knew how his brother could be – had so little control over his impulses he could ruin his chances with Veronica Donavan all for a few minutes of pleasure.

That's how Michael used to see things. Pragmatic. Before he realized that sex could be intoxicating –

Just like that, in the flow of a second, the ghost-smell of Sara's hair came taunting Michael's nostrils, the softness of her warm flesh when they were making love.

He watched as his knuckles turned white around the wheel.

"Mike?"

"Huh?"

"You all there or what? Fill me in."

"Right."

Michael was only going to be silent for a few seconds, just long enough to find something to tell his brother – surely, he could tell him something of what he'd been up to in the past few months without betraying his relationship with Sara.

Yet nothing came. Utter blankness.

Ultimately, out of sheer panic – and because Michael could see his brother knotting his brows in a corner of his eye – he said, "Did you follow the Presidential campaign?"

Of all things.

Better than saying nothing, Michael reckoned, or the truth.

"Yeah." Lincoln said, without much interest. "That Bagwell guy looks like an even bigger douche than the one currently holding the title of: Most Powerful Dude in the Universe. Gee, that country's not what it once was."

Michael was silent. Was determined not to add anything else. It was bad enough that he'd put such a subject on the table, when it was so close to Sara. That's what you called dodging a bullet –

"The Democrat girl's not bad." Lincoln added.

It was difficult to focus on the road. Michael's chest was all throbbing heartbeat and hot flashes. "Ah."

"I like the humanity in her. The honesty." Still, sounding pretty much indifferent – but his brother had a way of sounding like that. "When you've hung out with the sort of crowds I'm used to, you learn a few tricks about telling them liars apart, you know?"

"Uh-huh."

"I think she's straight enough." There were a few minutes of silence. "Without mentioning I'd totally fuck her. I mean, we don't get much TV in prison but we get politics all right, and let me tell you the guys in the hole have a horde of nicknames for her. Governor-McHotty is what comes out most often. I can't count how many of them I've seen with their hands in their pockets while the program was running –"

"Getting the picture."

"You okay, Mikey? You a little red."

"Right as rain."

Had he really just said that?

Lincoln was looking warily at him. "Anyway," he said. But his tone wasn't completely free from suspicious. "It's okay if I crash at your place for a while, right?"

"Of course."

"Just long enough for me to find a job –"

"Don't mention it," Michael interrupted, didn't think his brother so much as needed to ask. They'd been through this before, more than once.

Another pause. The road flashing them by silently for ten, fifteen minutes.

"So." Lincoln said. Casual, still, but casualness could mask a lot of things. "You're seeing someone?"

Christ. Did he have lipstick on his shirt collar? " _No_."

"Good. I was thinking we could go out tonight. You as my wingman."

"Uh – yeah, yeah." Simultaneously trying to focus on the road, keep a straight face and find a way out of this.

"Once more with feelings, Michael." Lincoln had his game-smile on. "Really, there hasn't been anyone since they locked me up?"

It wasn't like Lincoln to ask a question twice. Michael managed a strained smile. "You know how I am. Married to my work."

"Well," Lincoln slapped him on the shoulder, causing Michael's trajectory to veer left before he could get a better grip on the wheel. Lincoln pretended it hadn't happened. "Consider my return to town your return to social life. Bars. Dinners. Clubs." He added before Michael had time to protest, "You might be the pretty one, Mikey. But I'm the fun one. Never you forget it."

A sigh escaped the younger brother before he answered, "As if you'd let me."

…

The week when Michael's brother was released from prison was hell for Sara, for reasons entirely unconnected to this. It was only that her days got busier and busier, and only a third of her time was spent on actual politics – her program, preparing statements about her position on issues raging from economy to family clinics. The press meetings were the worst, having to have her hair and makeup done by the shooting team (anyone who stepped in front of the camera got it, they assured, even the males), answering sometimes extraordinarily dumb questions while smiling without retrieve (we all remember Hillary Clinton wasn't smiling enough for America's liking). Plus, Paul had started coaching her, playing the aggressive candidate – she suspected he took a mean pleasure in parodying Theodore Bagwell and watching as she crushed him mercilessly. "No such thing as too much practice," he only said when she told him she had no time for it. "The big debate's going to come sooner than you know it."

The most sleep she could hope to get was four hours a night. So, when she got a call from Michael saying they needed to meet, she didn't see what she could do but be adamant.

"I'm sorry," she said, and meant it. They'd gone on longer than usual without seeing each other and she could feel it, too, this craving under skin, begging for the warmth of his touch, the soothing mystery of his embrace. "I can't, Michael. There's just too much going on."

"Not the full night. Just an hour. _Half_ an hour. I can wait for you at the room tomorrow night and you just swing by when you get five minutes –"

"I won't even be in _Illinois_ , tomorrow, Michael." He should hear the regret in her voice was genuine. "I've been going all over the States this week. Paul thinks I should focus on the Bible belt, if you ask me, it's a lost cause, but it can't look like I'm not even trying."

Michael was silent. Was always very economic about showing his displeasure – no long, heavy sighs or raising his tone. Never.

"Wait," she said, forcing herself to view this with more distance. His suddenly wanting to see her, as soon as possible, saying they needed to talk. "Are you –"

"No. Don't even say it." There was a rare shade of color in his tone. Red. It made Sara feel oddly pleased – and increased the burning desire, in the pit of her stomach, screaming at her to _make_ time.

If she were just a normal woman with a normal job, she and Michael could see each other every day. They could be living together. The idea of spending every night in the same sheets as him was ludicrous, like a disproportionately huge fruit, overripe with happiness.

Sara closed her eyes, took a few seconds to think. "On Friday night, I'll be in Chicago. I've got a meeting Saturday at six."

"Okay."

"I'll just drive by the hotel, first. Four thirty?"

"Thank you."

Just that. She could tell he was about to hang up – to save her some time. A sudden wave of anger flashed her head with heat. Sara was usually better at keeping her temper in check, but sleeplessness has a way of bringing down your defenses.

"Michael." She said, before he could hang up. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He only said. "It's worth it."

The line went dead. Sara snapped her phone shut and clenched her teeth, her mouth bitter with bile. "It better be."

…

It had been easy enough for Michael to sneak out of the apartment without Lincoln noticing. For the past few nights since his release, Lincoln had either brought girls home or spent the night someplace else, which allowed Michael absolute freedom of movement. Even if Lincoln did notice he'd disappeared for a few hours, he could always convince him he was trying to give them more privacy.

Not that it was a small flat where no noise could go unheard by any of the tenants. That part had been no more awkward than the obligatory amount when your sibling is hooking up with someone in the next room. Michael had been much less okay with having to _lie_ to Lincoln. Sitting with him, at the bar, as his older brother wasted his breath – _How about the blonde one near the jukebox? C'mon, she's totally into you_. Though Michael had never been much into meeting women in bars, it proved rather hard to put an end to Lincoln's efforts.

Lincoln Burrows was a difficult man to say no to. Or to lie to.

After Michael had made some work-related excuse to head home early, during their last escapade at the bar, Lincoln had sighed and wrapped a strong hand around his brother's shoulder. It was good to have him back, despite all the added difficulty – undeniably good.

"One of these days, Michael," Lincoln had sighed, "I'm going to find out what your secret is."

It was difficult to estimate how serious he had been.

It had sounded serious enough to Michael that he found it essential he talked with Sara, be it at four thirty in the morning.

She wasn't even a little late at their rendezvous. Busy or not, Sara was never late, had her life planned out with clockwork minuteness.

Still, he had been early, waiting at the appointed hotel room for some ten minutes. The beats of his heart increased at the mere sound of her knocking. The intensity of the reactions she triggered in him defied all logic. Like she was inside his skin, connected to every fiber of his being – every nerve, every sensation.

Seeing her sent that perennial flash of surrealness through his head. She was wearing a black tailored jacket and skirt – her professional, take-me-seriously attire. Her hair was neat as it only was when she'd done a filmed interview. Since Lincoln had been at his apartment, Michael hadn't been able to follow them as closely.

They greeted each other with a kiss that was too fierce for a mere hello, but that neither of them required explanations for. Suddenly, Michael's legs met the edge of the mattress and he dropped backwards, Sara's body flush against his. His hand was locked tight around the back her head, the other blindly wandering across the satin-feel of her clothes. Jesus, how he'd missed her. The smell of her skin, the wet warmth of her kisses in his mouth.

It was hard to remember how little time they had, and how much they needed to talk.

With unsuspected willpower, Michael was able to close his hands around Sara's shoulders to draw her slightly away. Her body had been snaking against his, knees planted firmly on each side of him, her moves expertly pulling every rational thought out of his mind.

"Sorry."

He felt the hotness of her breath near his face as she said the word, still tasting of their shared desire.

"What did you want to talk to me about?"

Sounding serious, almost as serious as on television. He might forget she was currently straddling him if it wasn't for the uncomfortable tightness against the crotch of his jeans.

They eased out of each other's arms with sure determination – untangling from her body felt cruelly unnatural. Still, Michael tried to keep in mind what he'd meant to say to her.

"Lincoln was released from prison this week."

"Right," Sara wasn't sure whether to sound enthusiastic or worried. Honestly, Michael's brother sounded like trouble – Sara had known people like him, recidivists who went back to crime – be it drugs, sex, theft – not really because they wanted to but because they seemed inexplicably drawn to it. It was their routine; their home.

From all the times Michael had talked to her about him, Sara had been able to make a rough sketch of the man's personality. Sara was all about helping people, of course. Her first adult charity work had been in a center that assisted former convicts in reinserting themselves in society. That had been enough to get her father furious, which hadn't been the point but happened to be a pleasant bonus. All that to say Sara stood firm on the fact that a great majority of people don't remain criminals all their lives. People _could_ change, and most of them did, however hard it became for them to find normal employment or get an actual chance at a fresh start.

But there were some, only a handful, who only ever seemed to run in circles. Never finding their way out of trouble because trouble was the only universe they knew – was the only thing they were _good_ at. Sara had started fearing Lincoln Burrows might be of this type. Needless to say how painful this sort of behavior was, for the people who loved the criminal – the people who stayed behind, patient and forgiving, when he was taken back inside those familiar prison walls.

Now, she and Michael had resumed a less intimate position, both of them sitting at the edge of the mattress. Still, Sara couldn't quite get her heart to stop racing, nor could she chase the concerned thoughts from her head.

"Has it been going okay?" She asked, because Michael was still fishing for a way to put this.

"Yes and no."

"And what part would be in the 'no'?"

Though she could tell Michael was struggling, she found no trace of embarrassment in his eyes – they didn't shy away from hers. "Look," he said in the end, "the heart of it is, I've never managed to keep a secret from Lincoln."

He hardly needed to ask her more formally. The caution and ready apology in her eyes were an answer all to themselves. Still, this was a conversation that needed having.

"Michael –"

"I don't want to jeopardize what we have." He cut in. "I wouldn't for the world. I only want you to consider this, not because I hate lying to my brother, but because I truly think it would be less of a risk than for him to try and find out by himself."

"What do you mean?"

Michael chuckled – it was oddly comforting, hearing that sound. "Linc knows I'm keeping something from him, all right? I don't think it took him over five minutes to guess."

"What –"

"It's nothing I can help, Sara. Lincoln knows me too well. And he's curious as a devil, let me tell you that."

He watched as Sara licked her lips and took a while to consider this. No more than a strategic show – she knew, already, she couldn't allow him to tell his brother about them. "Look, I realize Lincoln's release might make it harder for you to keep this a secret." Her voice was the pacifying one he'd seen her use when members of the audience got aggressive. Michael felt vaguely insulted by this but didn't think to protest. "If he's staying at your apartment, of course, he's going to notice you go out sometimes at night."

This concession felt too much of an easy win.

Sara shrugged – there was nothing casual about it. "Why don't you just tell him you're seeing someone who's in a complicated situation that makes it impossible for you to be open about it? He'll think I'm married, most likely."

But Michael was already laughing – tiredness and desperation. "Sara, he won't let me stop there. He'll want to know why, who, where we met –"

"And does that mean he'll pry the truth out of your lips?" She chuckled, and her own laughter was disbelief, trying not to give way to anger. "Michael, I'm sorry. But I don't _know_ your brother."

"You know me."

"I know the two of you have visibly taken diametrically different paths."

"Lincoln can keep a secret."

"Do you expect me to risk everything I've worked for on that?"

Michael didn't answer. Didn't know, suddenly, what he'd been expecting. "I just don't know how to do this," he said. "Keep these two parts of my life completely separate –"

"It's not forever." She might as well have shut up. When you're in love, four to eight years feel like forever.

Michael looked down at his hand. Sara realized a second later that she'd seized it, wrapping her fingers tight around his palm.

"I wish you could meet him."

"So do I," she realized she meant this. However much she and Michael cared about each other, their respective lives were still uncharted grounds. They weren't _part_ of it. Not really. It struck her, suddenly, that they might be a couple until the end of two presidential mandates, and still she wouldn't know all sorts of everyday things about him – what he ate for breakfast, whether he drank coffee or orange juice to wake himself up, what sort of books he had on his bedside table.

"Michael," she sighed, "if this is too hard for you –"

"What?" He was smiling, genuinely enough that she felt immediately calmer. His smiles had a way of making the whole of their troublesome lives easier. "This is my best option, Sara. It doesn't matter that it's complicated – that we don't see enough of each other. What good would it do me to stop seeing you altogether?" Stroking his thumb over her cheek. "I can't do that. I never stop thinking about you. What you're doing, what you're thinking of." He shook his head. "I'll take what I can get, until it's possible for you to give me more. In the meantime, everything I am is yours. You can just stop by this room every time you have a second and take whatever you need."

Sara kissed him, then, not because she needed it – she felt his own needs so vividly, it was difficult to tell which one of them needed it the hardest.

"When I'm done with politics," she said, "you and I are getting away from Chicago." The words flowed out of her mouth of their own accord. "We're buying a house in the woods where the news can't reach us."

"Will it have a cabin for Lincoln?"

"Yeah, sure."

Sara was dreamily contemplating a life where her cell phone would never ring, where she wouldn't need to speak to Paul Kellerman over three times a day.

Then Michael was kissing her and all thinking was done.

"When do you need to leave?"

She checked her watch. "Ten minutes."

That wasn't nearly enough. But it didn't give either of them the will to pull away still.

…

 **End Notes** : Let me know your thoughts. See you soon with an update.


	7. The Debate

There was no reason for Sara to feel anxious about the presidential debates that were coming up, as September drew near, with its shock of orange leaves and autumn chilliness. After all, she'd been trained for this. She'd faced Bagwell before, and she believed the very sight of his face – not to mention the strong smell of the perfume he wore, _Angel_ – would be quite efficient in fortifying her in moments of doubt. That she would _have_ to win not just because she wanted to be President, but because she could never tolerate for someone like Theodore Bagwell to be hers.

Yes, all things considered, Bagwell was exactly the sort of man that would be ideal for Sara to face on the battlefield.

A vain, women-hating bigot that had been gifted with charisma – a proof of just how far America could go when it was goaded on by a tyrant who knew his way around words.

"You're going to win," Kellerman told her, many times, not with encouragement but as a statistical prediction. "You know your stuff better than he does. There isn't a weak spot in your program, so he won't be able to make you look green – and when that'll fail," he assured, on a tone of warning, "he _will_ try to make you look _womanly_. Expect it. _Use_ it. Expose him as the chauvinist pig he is."

In these moments, Sara actually felt she liked Kellerman better than she'd ever suspected until the campaign started.

When the time came, Sara stepped on that television set with her composure intact. Her smile was serious, pleasant, not large enough to inspire frivolity. Of course, she could not afford to be afraid.

(Fear is for the weak and, so would Theodore Bagwell hint, for women)

Michael, however, wasn't armed or armored as Sara was to defend himself against anxiety, and he was actually shaking when he watched her walk to that podium, adjust her mike, and stand perfectly calm, a few feet away from the Republican candidate, who was smiling a wider smile, who was counting on winning the country's affections, not only their minds.

The platform looked surreal, to Michael – so absolutely blue, it was no wonder they called the shade _presidential_. For the woman he loved to be standing there was terrifying – as if she were freely dangling amongst the clouds.

"Nervous, Mike, are you?"

Michael started when Lincoln sneaked up behind him – he wasn't going to watch the debates, he said. Had better things to do than 'to watch those fools trying to humiliate each other'.

"No," Michael lied, and wordlessly accepted the beer his brother dropped into his hand, which was hanging limply from the arm of his chair. "Can you blame me for hoping we're finally going to get somebody decent in the white house?"

Lincoln shrugged his shoulders. "Guess not." Then he added – something he'd repeated a considerable number of times over the past few months, almost as if to test his brother's patience. "I would totally fuck her."

"That's sexist, Linc."

"Isn't sex _always_ sexist?"

"No. Just because it has the word 'sex' in it doesn't mean it's the same thing."

"Well," Lincoln shrugged again. "You know me. _Words_."

Then he was gone, and Michael could concentrate on the debate, which was yet to begin.

Bagwell was looking trim in a black suit and blue tie, his hair sleek and carefully combed. Sara had gone for a dress, red, which Kellerman had winced at – "Why not something that looks a little less sinful?" He'd suggested. "White?"

"I'm not a bloody saint."

"They don't have to know that."

"Hillary wore white. For all the good it did her."

"Hillary had a libidinous husband. She couldn't afford to pass for a saint."

But there had been no changing her mind. Sara wanted to wear red, not because it had been the color of power since ancient Rome, or because the dress was so becoming, that it hinted success, almost perfection – she knew she was ever stunning in that dress, but it wasn't even because beauty was a weapon sharper than most.

It was because red was the color she'd been forbidden to wear as a girl, that her father would hiss at when he'd see it on her, from the bottom of the stairs, as she'd get down from her bedroom.

Whether it was clothes or lipstick didn't matter.

"Go wash _that_ off."

"Dad, it's –"

"Just go and _change_ , Sara."

Yes. That was what really determined her choice of clothes.

Red was the color worn by powerful _men_. For women, it was the color of prostitutes, sinners, adulterers. And Sara felt it was high time they should get representation.

There was no easy start, no phase of introduction. Sometimes, that happened, but Sara hadn't really thought today would be the case. From the first question, from the moment Sara's eyes crossed Bagwell's across the blue platform, she could feel the heat of hate between them, knew they were both wild animals trying to make their way to the top of the jungle.

Of course, he got her about wanting to stop the war in Syria. This country and its military, Bagwell argued, needed a strong hand. Reducing investment in warfare would be a terrible idea – America had gotten where it was today because it was a Giant, with a people whose hard work and dedication were beyond compare. Now was no time to slacken, or to allow it to be corrupted by the tremendous inflow of illegal immigrants he assured crossed American borders each day.

Sara was calm under assault, and very firm in her responses –

"I'd like to know whose America you're describing, Senator Bagwell. Because the one I'm trying to represent is no giant. Giants collapse, didn't you know? They tend to have unsteady foundations. What I'm looking to represent is _people_. People who don't want to bomb civilians in a faraway land because the nation's too proud to admit they're making things worse. People who'd rather have money placed in our school system, to get started on fixing the unimaginable inequalities that plague American education. People who are tired of being _told_. People who want their voices heard."

By the end of it, Sara knew defeat hadn't yet crossed the Senator's mind.

It would take a while. The man was too used to winning crowds to realize when he was losing one. Getting away with a charming joke was another thing he knew how to do, but when he called Sara's campaign "nearly a teenage rebellion", no one from the audience gave so much as an awkward laughter – and Bagwell's laughter came out awkward as a result.

All the while, Sara's eyes were set surely on him, her voice unwavering, her smiles unforgiving.

 _I've got you_ , her eyes were saying, as he fumbled to win the people's assent once more. Bagwell was the sort of politician who depended on the fickleness of the mob. Until then, he'd found it easy to have it on his side, gathering it around a common enemy: _I know who's stealing your jobs, ladies and gentlemen, and it ain't decent American folk_.

It was easy for people to follow blind. What Sara asked was harder – thought, participation. But she believed it was ultimately what the people wanted – and what they deserved.

When she and Bagwell shook hands, at the end of the debate, Michael was sweating badly in his living room couch, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand when his vision got blurred.

His gut was twisted with nausea, and he realized how badly he wanted to see Sara.

Except if he could see her, right now, he might want to tell her to stop – everything. To get out of there alive while she still could. These were dangerous, dangerous waters she was swimming.

Sara herself felt unshaken by the event, and checked her cell phone when she got in the car waiting for her at the exit.

There was one unread text from Paul Kellerman.

 _'_ _You were right to go with red.'_

…

 **End Notes** : this chapter was short, but it seemed to stand well on its own so I ended it there. I'll try not to be long with a next update. Please let me know your thoughts as always.


	8. Red

Abruzzi drummed his fingers over the armrest of his chair, a grave, weary beat. His candidate, Theodore Bagwell, had been arrogantly waving off the evidence that was staring them in the face for the past half hour.

It was one thirty p.m. The third and final presidential debate had come to an end some three hours ago, and Bagwell looked dead set on running from the facts.

So what if there were actual numbers saying how much more popular that democrat gal was? A kitten, he'd called her ( _I'll make one bite out of her_ ). _But you know polls are horseshit, John_. _What, CNN's calling her a revolution in terms of gender rights, the 'more hopeful face of the American people', which the last President has led to disgrace? CNN's bullocks._

When he heard that specific British word leave his very southern candidate's mouth, Abruzzi knew Theodore had been thrown off his game. Big time.

And that was displeasing news indeed.

John Abruzzi wasn't the sort of man who liked to find out he'd been backing the wrong horse.

"Let me tell you what, Theodore." Abruzzi interrupted – the calm in his voice shouldn't be read as a forgiving. "You don't want to hear it from the press, I'll give you a little wakeup call, because it's high time you got one." He paused to make sure he had his candidate's full attention. "You're losing the race."

Bagwell was currently standing in Abruzzi's office – pacing around, as had befitted his angry raving, while John was sitting, cool and collected, behind his desk.

There was a loaded pistol, taped under the table, and as he caught the flash of raw rage in Bagwell's eyes, it crossed John's mind to reach for it. Bagwell could be done away with, just like that, in a few minutes. The man _was_ getting on his nerves. Chopped body pieces in a body bag and voilà. Exit the Republican candidate.

But it would be too late to find another strong candidate, and John didn't believe for a second the woman would make such a malleable puppet as old Bagwell.

That left him no other option than to stick with his admittedly flawed protégé.

"The hell are you talking about?"

"Wipe that scowl off your face, Theodore." Abruzzi sighed. "I don't have the patience to tend to your wounded pride."

"I am _not_ losing. I –"

"The girl is tearing you apart. Only a vain fool like you would be able to deny it to yourself for such a long time. Every debate, she got the better of you."

"Now –"

"You underestimated her. And I listened to you." Abruzzi smiled. What an eel would smile like if it could. "That was my mistake. But loosen up a little, old boy. I'm not saying we're throwing in the towel."

The mafioso relaxed in his leather chair, fingers crisscrossed over the surface of the desk. He used to like it, this show of power, to _live_ for it. And now, even as he made himself think more and more of a caricature, he discovered he enjoyed it still. Even enjoyed the dumb startlement on Bagwell's face.

"If you can't beat her by the rules, we'll just have to be a little – sly."

Bagwell's features didn't quite relax, but his eyes shone keenly beneath his arched brows, reminding Abruzzi of what he'd liked about him in the first place. The ruthless intelligence, through all those layers of practiced charisma. Yes, he was the sort of man who'd have no scruples doing what he needed to get to the top.

"I get you," Bagwell said.

"Atta boy."

If Theodore felt insulted at this show of familiarity, he kept the offense to himself.

"Now," Abruzzi resumed, "the first thing you have to keep in mind is everyone has weaknesses. You have them. I have them," on a spectacularly calm tone. "And that Democrat woman who's giving you such a hard time, _she_ has them, too. You be sure of that."

"So…" Bagwell started, prodding him for more.

"So I don't want you to worry," Abruzzi said. "I'll have her followed. Get to know her a little better."

"Knowing your enemies."

"Exactly." Abruzzi chuckled. "You know, it's easy to show a strong front, with your makeup and your high heels and your evening dress – but take someone by _surprise_ , catch them in the middle of the night, in their nightwear, a thread of drool drying on their cheeks, and suddenly they're much more amenable to negotiations."

"You mean, we gonna threaten her?"

"I mean, soon enough, there's not going to be anything about Governor Sara Tancredi that _I_ don't know. And once I've found a spot that's sore enough to her that it's worth the presidency – she'll back down."

"And I'll win."

Abruzzi grinned his knowing, quiet grin. "You'll win."

It was harmless for Bagwell to get drunk on all the power he'd have, sitting in the oval office. It'd be too late to backpedal by the time he'd realize who was pulling the strings.

…

It took a while for Sara to realize she was shaking, in Michael's arms, when they had finished making love. The intensity of pleasure alone didn't account for it. Just a few hours ago, she'd faced Theodore Bagwell in the battlefield for what she hoped was the last time ( _don't be so sure, you both might be running again in four years' time_ ). There had been no uncertainty, then – no fear or tremor in her voice, as she dealt him blow after blow.

His own attacks had been the same type as the two previous debates, easy to predict and easier still to counter.

It was only in the after the throes of orgasm had left her body entirely relaxed, her upper body pressed flush against Michael's, their legs a tangle under the sheets, that the enormity of what had happened tonight fully struck her –

Tonight? Hell, this whole _year_.

She was going to become president.

Even when Kellerman had told her those exact words, over the phone, a couple of hours ago, Sara realized the message hadn't quite sunk in until now.

She was about to be elected to the highest office in America.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, as Michael's hand traced softly down the shivering muscles in her arms. "Just adrenalin, I guess. Better now than in front of a camera."

Sure enough, showing the slightest symptom of distress to the nation would amount to political suicide. How quick would Bagwell be to point his finger at her – _See this hysterical woman there, actually claiming she can run this country? Preposterous delusion! Probably, she's affected with some sort of womanly disorder, our dear ancestors would have called it 'maggots in the brain'_. _Don't you want a firmer ground to place your vote, ladies and gentlemen?_

Well. 'Preposterous' might have been a big word for Bagwell.

Still…

Still, there was no denying those old voices in Sara's head, that refused to believe she'd truly made it to where she was now.

 _I've never been brought up to think even in my wildest dreams that I_ could _get there_ , she realized.

How surreal would it feel, to place her hand on the Bible and be sworn in as the forty-sixth President of America –

Michael's fingers, sinking softly in her hair, brushing the curve of her cheekbone, anchored her to the here and now.

There hadn't been much time to talk, when they'd first seen each other – as usual, desire must get its way before they could have a decent conversation. But now, now that they were momentarily satiated, Sara detected the shadowiness in his eyes, the weight of unspoken things drawing him back.

"What is it?" She asked. Anything short of stark honesty was pointless with Michael.

"It's just the way I've seen you, these past few weeks," it didn't look like it cost him to say. "Standing there, with Theodore Bagwell – it was a little like you were being aimed at by a thousand invisible rifles. Does that make sense to you?"

"Vaguely."

Sara sensed a wave of coolness prickle her skin as Michael sat up, blankets pooling at his waist. A familiar flash of desire came over his face as her nipples stiffened, and she grabbed a fistful of silk-thin covers and held them to her chest, sitting up also. They would have to talk about this, eventually, and now was as good a time as most.

"I know I said it was worth it," he let out.

Shock made Sara silent for a few seconds. "Was?"

"Just – I know it's not my place, and you don't want to hear this."

"You have something to say, Michael, say it."

"I'm scared shitless that you're going to win this race."

The words made no impact as they hit her. Her posture was straight, her armor intact. Michael could see in the firm nod she responded with, how she was taking this – calming a boyfriend's fears was easy as hello when you could soothe the mind of an agitated nation.

"I know this is an – uncommon situation."

"No, please." He shook his head. "This isn't about my freaking out over you becoming the most powerful person in the country. None of that threatened masculine ego. You've soared much higher than my ambitions can carry me, and I have no resent over that, no wish to make you smaller or more controllable."

"You think you have to tell me that? That I'd be with you if I thought –"

"No," he interrupted, hadn't patience enough to wait. Those worries had been bottling up for too long, now, and who knew when he'd get another chance to let them out? "I just want to make sure we're on the same page, Sara – that you hear what I'm really saying."

Calm, solemn eyes met his own gaze, and the nod she gave was earnest, inviting him to continue. "It's not that I don't think you can't hold your own. It's those people who scare me. People like Bagwell."

"Well," Sara shrugged, visibly impassive. Sometimes, even he couldn't read her – couldn't access to wherever those secret thoughts of her disappeared. "It's a man's world," she finished, still missing his point.

"It's a _snake's_ world, Sara."

"Yes," without irritation, "and it always has been. Look," she resumed, still extraordinarily calm, "it's not that I don't think your worries are legitimate, all right?"

It vaguely struck him how much he loved her for using words like _legitimate_ in bed. Right now, though, the fact came as a distraction rather than anything else.

"It's just I don't know where you're going with this," she admitted. "I mean, what do you think can happen? That I can quit, let Bagwell have the presidency? That grinning goblin. I'd rather leave the country in the hands of a toddler."

Michael took this calmly also. Of course, it was pointless.

Sara was too far to turn back, now, and she didn't _want_ to turn back – she wanted the oval. If it was possible for any one person to change the world, she wanted to take her best shot. And he loved her for it.

But he also loved her regardless of it all, and that deeper, selfish love, wished she never had to put herself in such an exposed position.

"Would it make you feel better," she wondered, "if I said I was scared, too?"

"Are you?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I guess it's not really agreeing with how bad I was shaking just a few minutes ago – but no." It was plain in her voice she wasn't lying. "Maybe it is a jungle, a snake's world, Michael. But it's also _my_ world. Not just because it's what I was born in – it's what I chose. You understand?"

"Yes."

Always. From the moment he'd seen her, looking like a dumbfounded fan boy, most certainly, at that volunteering center… He'd known he and Sara were two twinned souls, but coming from different dimensions. They shared most qualities, but had made a different choice of course. Where he'd developed mostly kindness, she'd valued strength – and it had brought her exactly where she needed to be.

Michael knew the world of politics was Sara's as clearly as he knew it wasn't his.

 _So why this?_ He wondered. Why should they meet now, when it was too late for either of them to live in each other's habitat?

Maybe because, on another level, more than each of them belonged to their respective world, they belonged to each other.

"When the presidency's over," she said, "things will be different. No more spotlight. Sure, it'll get talked about if I reveal a relationship with someone." She didn't say, _someone like you_ , or _someone who has a brother like yours_ , which he supposed was merciful. "But what then? People just aren't so watchful of former presidents."

"I guess not."

"I can have a decent position and still live in the light with you."

A question flashed through Michael's tongue, but he bit it back.

After all those years spent in the shadows, would they really have an idea how to live in the light?

 _We'll just have to learn,_ he told himself, as Sara leant in to kiss him, the soft feel of her lips surreal as it was at the start. _At the very least, we'll have to try._

…

It was a little after six a.m. when Michael got home. As usual, he'd watched as Sara disappeared inside one of those anonymous black vehicles that carried her away into the night. Not a limo, nothing that actually looked presidential, that might be noticed by some insomniac passerby. Michael only ever watched through the window, drawing aside the reddish drape that echoed the color of the hotel flooring and walls, and peering through the glass to catch Sara sliding nimbly inside the car.

For some reason, he never managed to get a full view of her. The flash of her red hair or a slim leg, chicly dressed in nylon, the point of a black heel, was about all he could hope for.

Watching her like this always got Michael thinking about what Lincoln had told him, more or less teasingly, a couple of weeks ago.

"So, we're going to talk about it?"

"About what?" Michael had played innocent, to no avail.

The grin sitting on Lincoln's lips was undefeatable, shiny with confidence. "Your secret lover."

Michael had wanted to laugh and look outraged at the same time. The young man could have saved himself a lot of trouble in life if he'd been a better actor – but like all the kids who for some reason never think of mischief, he was so unused to being caught in a lie that it left him utterly defenseless.

"I don't have –"

"Mikey, my boy." Lincoln had admonished. "Don't insult my intelligence. I might not be the smart one in the family… but I'm not completely daft."

He'd slammed his brother in the back, and that had been the end of that.

"My secret lover," Michael whispered to himself, as he shuffled his key inside the lock. Thinking not of Sara's naked skin or the feel of her in his arms, but that fragmented glimpse he'd gotten of her as she got in her car.

No image could stick around longer on his mind than her walking away.

Oh, with all her talks of _one day_ …

Michael entered his apartment, cautious not to make any noise. Although his brother was a deep sleeper, Michael preferred to be on the safe side of things.

Exhaustion was weighing heavily, tar-black on Michael's eyelids. The lack of sleep never made him irascible, but this morning, he thought it _was_ making him a tad gloomy.

Would it even be so bad, to wait a lifetime in the shadows, having that promise of light being pushed farther and farther away as the years wore on?

He didn't think so.

In truth, Michael remembered the books he used to read as a kid, stories of Lancelot and Guinevere, and it struck him he'd learned long ago that love was more than what contemporary media fed its casual viewers. Relationships, devotion, weren't only about passionate drama, and that inevitable protracted ending – marriage, children.

The shadows were a decent place for love to grow. Thoughtlessly, Michael caught himself smiling, to the thought of an undiscovered kind of rose that wouldn't need light but darkness. It would be red, of course. Red like the dress Sara had worn on television, like the cascading curls that poured through his fingers when he clasped her to him.

Still without a noise, Michael discarded his coat and headed for the guestroom where his brother slept – the door was cracked open, and Lincoln usually shut it when he was sleeping. A small push confirmed to Michael that his brother wasn't in bed.

Michael sighed, somewhere between concern and amusement. "So, I'm not the only one who sneaks out at night."

Though exploring the possibility that Lincoln might have gone back to his old ways did point its head, Michael pushed it back, deeper under the surface.

 _Later_.

Right now, he didn't want to worry, or think about Lincoln at all –

In an hour only, he was supposed to be at work, and he had a clear albeit surprising idea of what to do to pass the time.

In the study area of his living room, Michael fetched a pair of scissors and two leaves of colored paper – red and green – leftovers from a very old hobby. It'd been years since he'd actually taken the time for origami. A fine teacher when it came to values such as patience – and perseverance.

 _This could be worse_ , Michael thought, sitting at his desk, the feel of folded paper familiar and soothing. _Lancelot never got to even touch Guinevere_. _Not for a long time._ _And he had to endure a husband_.

But at least, Lancelot's queen was safe and sound, sitting in her throne. Lancelot could have the satisfaction of fighting her battles, while all Michael could do was sit there and think ( _watch her walk away_ ), trying to put a shape on his feelings for her, a paper rose that wouldn't fade or die and that would weather the darkness.

Using his thumb and index to harden a red crease of paper, Michael pricked his finger and withdrew it just in time to avoid staining the rose with a drop of blood.

Pressing the tiny wound to his mouth, Michael got on his feet, leaving the origami rose on his desk. When he'd taken a few steps, headed for the bathroom, where he would scramble for a band-aid in the cabinet under the sink, Michael suddenly stopped and turned back around, to take a look at his work.

The rose was finished now, and he'd felt the force of its silent call, even as it lay apparently harmless on the glass surface of his desk.

Like a lone red eye, staring from the table.

Michael's pulse quickened as he stared back.

 _And if I_ could _protect her?_ He thought. _If I could somehow enter her world –_

The entry door slammed open and Michael started so violently Lincoln chuckled. "Gee, Mike. You're nervous as a cat these days."

"Sorry."

Lincoln squinted his eyes. "What's that on your finger."

Thinking of Guinevere and Lancelot, and that his brother was too far down the right track to be misled anyway, Michael shrugged and answered, "A war wound."

"Is that right?"

Michael heard Lincoln laugh as he disappeared inside the bathroom and washed his bloody finger at the sink.

"You know it's bad luck," Lincoln said, from the living room.

"What is?"

"What you just did. 'By the pricking of my thumb, something wicked'… Something, something."

"Ha," Michael laughed, sliding his head through the doorframe to catch a glimpse of his brother – dressed in a leather jacket and plain but dark clothes, he looked nearly like his teenage self. Which wasn't good news in and of itself.

Once again, Michael thought about where it was Lincoln might be disappearing at night. The darker your past is, the more overwhelming and strong it is when it comes back to claim you – and Lincoln had always had a hard time saying no to easy money, was never one to shy away from dealing with ruthless people.

 _Why_ he kept returning to these old jobs that would land him in prison, Michael couldn't say, couldn't fully believe Lincoln didn't think he was worth better than them.

As their gazes met, while Lincoln was hanging his jacket on the side of the couch, and Michael was turning off the tap in the bathroom, keeping his head in the doorframe, Michael felt a wave of familiar, bitter warmth travel through him.

 _How much is too much_ , he wondered, _when it comes to your brother, to the people you love_ –

The thought of Sara fleeted through his mind, red and radiant.

 _Nothing_ , he reckoned. _Probably nothing._

"I thought you hated Shakespeare," Michael remarked.

"Nah. He's all right. Just wanted to piss off my teachers." Lincoln's eyes dropped to Michael's desk, by the window, and the origami rose. "Who's this for?"

Once more, Michael shrugged. "My secret lover."

Lincoln raised his eyes back to his brothers and, after a moment of startled pause, chuckled in genuine amusement. "Well, isn't this going to be a fun time for us, Michael."

Fun, Michael reflected, might not be the word. But sure enough, it would be a time to remember.

…

 **End Notes** : Still having the best of times with this story. Please share thoughts and comments.


	9. The Right Time

"Well _fuck_ me." John Abruzzi said when the images on the screen of his telephone came to life, sitting up in his bed, possibly waking up his wife.

The white, loose tank top he wore for sleep already felt sticky on him – night sweats may be the price of leading a criminal organization with confidence and style during the day.

Right at this second, he probably looked nothing short of a dirty old man. The images weren't perfect – no light show or close ups like in an adult movie, more figures than flesh, but on two or three occasions you could see a clear shot of the woman's face, clear enough that even those who'd declined to show the mildest interest for the presidential race could identify _who_ was starring in this most unofficial M-rated film.

After a moment of silent stun, John Abruzzi burst into peals of laughter – tired and astonished and, what the hell, a little wicked.

"We got you now, Miss Tancredi. We sure got you."

At the other end of Chicago, two hundred miles from Abruzzi's private lodgings, Lincoln Burrows was crouching in a decrepit building, forsaken by all but a few roaches who in the past couple of hours had got used to his presence. Lincoln's jaw was slack with shock even as he held up his phone, recording the very images that were being transmitted to John Abruzzi's cell phone.

The horror of what he saw drenched him like a black rain, icy and piercing through to his bones, frying itself in the fashion of a red-iron tattoo in the back of his brain.

"Oh God."

The words dropped meaninglessly in the dismal atmosphere of the desolate building. On the wall opposite him, a cockroach crept its way up to avoid the drizzle coming in through the holes in the window, whose shattered edges made Lincoln think of a set of ragged teeth.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know."

To himself ( _maybe also to the black roach_ ) the apology sounded valid.

Lincoln couldn't even think of switching off his phone – and what good would it do?

He might delete the recording immediately, but John Abruzzi certainly wouldn't, and it had caught enough to do damage already.

The transgression of violating a woman's rights to privacy had been enough of a stain on Lincoln's conscience – but by that time, he'd thought, it was foul enough that it could take one more – and the knowledge of what he did it _for_. What amounted to rigging the presidential election, so that a snake-smiling bastard could be sworn in as the forty-sixth president…

Even if it had been a total stranger in that motel room with her, it would have already jumped to the top of Lincoln's evil actions.

But _this_.

There were no words.

His brother's hand stroking its way across Sara Tancredi's bare stomach, _his_ face buried in the crook of her neck, _his_ lips she turned to, craning her neck backwards – they stood by the window, his front to her back – and kissed with no less desire than Lincoln had ever felt in his luckiest hours. And something else ( _worse_ ), another kind of hunger, that Lincoln had never witnessed before, but wasn't enough of a fool that he couldn't see it for what it was.

As he heard Abruzzi's laughter at the other end of the line – _We got you now, Miss Tancredi. We sure got_ you – the enormity of what Lincoln had done sank in. _Cluck_ as he dropped his phone; a rustling noise when the roaches on the ground naturally shrank back in fear.

At any time, Lincoln felt, a lightning was going to burst through the roof of that building and burn him on the spot.

 _Divine_ punishment.

What could better suit his own biblical betrayal?

…

A couple of weeks before any of this took place, Lincoln was determined nothing _like_ it would ever happen again.

Yes, he _had_ been back to see his old boss, which in itself could be viewed as fishy – _I smell a rat_ , Linc's mother would say, as she always did when she caught him lying – but he had been summoned, after all, and John Abruzzi wasn't the sort of man you just sent packing.

Their working relationship went back big time, but eighteen months in prison was the sort of thing that made a man take a step back and look on his own life with some distance.

And Lincoln had _known_ , even as he met with fellow inmates who were at their sixth stay in the hole, that this one would be his personal last.

 _No more messing around_.

There was a point when a man just had to look in the mirror and be honest about what was looking back.

 _I go on like this_ , Lincoln had thought, _I'll be dead before I'm fifty, facing a not-so-difficult choice between eating my own gun and being found dead in some alley with a couple bullets in my kneecaps._

There had to be a different path he could find his way on, even now.

But he'd found himself on this one enough times that it was harder than he had planned to determine whether he was right.

His first few interviews with John Abruzzi, after Lincoln's stay in prison, actually went down fine.

John slapped him on the back as a greeting, and the smile on his face – albeit devious – was honest. Though that might not mean Abruzzi would have any trouble shooting Lincoln in the head one of these days, it was worth something that the two men's getting along wasn't for show.

Lincoln despised hypocrisy and supposed John did also.

Killing people he liked could be considered ruthless, but at least John wouldn't _pretend_ to like people he'd later kill all the same.

That didn't make it any easier for Lincoln to crawl out of this hole he'd dug for himself over the years, like he was trapped in some excruciatingly narrow passage miles-deep underground, upside down, so tight all he could see and breathe was dirt – and heaven knows, to keep going down was easier than to try and scramble for a way back to the surface.

The look on John's face was cool as cucumber when Lincoln told him about wanting to quit the drug-dealing business. No half-mouthed reluctance or anything like that. Lincoln wasn't one to beat around the bush, and John always appreciated a man who knew his own mind.

"You telling me you're done working for me, Burrows?" No audible threat or vexation.

This talk took place in Abruzzi's office, although Lincoln had no idea he was sitting where Senator Bagwell himself had sat quite a number of times in the recent past.

Lincoln shrugged his shoulders. "Only your drug-related line of work, boss. I'm cool if you're going to offer me a job in one of your restaurants. I can't cook for squat, but I'll do the dishes and mop the floor shiny as well as any guy."

A chuckle broke past Abruzzi's mouth – it had an odd, doggish sound to it. "And you don't think anyone will find it remotely suspicious that you're working for me, in the open?"

"I never got myself in a predicament that the cops could trace back to you."

"Which is why I _like_ you, Burrows. Why I'd be…" A short pause while he pondered over the right word. " _Disheartened_ to see you go."

Lincoln kept silent. Unmotivated talk would only sound nervous.

"It isn't in my habit to give legal work to my drug-dealers."

Silence once more.

Two, maybe three full minutes.

"I'll tell you what." Abruzzi joined his hands over the surface of his desk. "You've always been straight with me, and you've had the decency to come here and face me rather than try to screw me over – which I respect, I do. So here's the deal."

One more pause for effect. Not that Lincoln needed to be impressed, but he reckoned Abruzzi could no longer help it – when you'd done the act enough times, it came back to you before you could snap your fingers, would inevitably put a telling tint on your tone and facial expressions, like a law of nature, the way your cheeks grow red at the slightest breeze once they've been frozen once.

"You do one last job for me. One of my choosing," John said. "And then, I'll see to it that you're hired for life doing whatever boring and normal stuff you've apparently decided on."

Lincoln considered this. Not so he'd look tough in negotiations – contrarily to the mobster's theatrical disposition, there was nothing superfluous, or indeed, artificial, about Lincoln.

"I can't be caught with drugs again, boss. You know that as well as I do. Laws are tough on dealers who lapse. It could be twenty years, next time – it could be prison for life."

"And if it isn't drugs?" Lincoln waited. Abruzzi was to the point. "The reason why you haven't been caught _more_ times, Burrows, is you're good at hiding. You blend in when you have to. You're resourceful when you need to disappear fast."

"So?"

"There's a woman I'd like you to follow."

Surprise was such, Lincoln actually arched both brows. "What?"

"Just long enough for you to dig up some dirt – anything scandalous will do."

Relief fell warmly on Lincoln's chest, easing the beats of his heart. Scandal, he thought, was not so bad, considering Abruzzi's line of business.

Still, he knew a job like this could hide darker truths – following the woman and taking a couple pictures wasn't a lot, but if she wound up dead because the man who'd hired him happened to be a jealous ex…

"I'll accept on one condition."

Though Abruzzi wasn't quite smiling, his blue eyes gleamed a little, as if amused to see Lincoln, too, came with conditions.

"Yes?"

"You give me a full briefing on what it is I'm doing. Before I collect any evidence, I want to know what the consequences will be – no bullshit."

"No bullshit," John agreed, and was quick with an answer. "The woman I want you to stalk is Governor Sara Tancredi. And when you've come up with enough dirt on her – I'll use that to blackmail her into quitting the race."

It's possible Lincoln's jaw fell slack when he heard this, however well he usually dealt with surprises. There was no need for Abruzzi to explain his game with Senator Bagwell. It was enough for Lincoln that he'd asked him to do something that didn't require killing or physically harming anyone –

Although taking the blame for Senator Bagwell's presidency could amount to quite a death toll (you never knew when a good candidate was going to wind up bad, but you sure enough knew when a bad one was going to wind up _really_ bad).

And Lincoln had liked this year's Democrat candidate. Had liked her a lot. Not only because she sounded smart and decently human on television – a rare gift for politicians – but because Michael had had this huge crush on her that had tremendously endeared her to Lincoln's eyes.

Still, this was an honest deal, and surely if Michael would be disappointed for his favorite candidate to back down, it'd be a small pain compared to his joy in seeing Lincoln was finally turning himself into a law-abiding man.

"You got it," Lincoln said.

Then – probably as one of those theatrical reflexes he couldn't help – Abruzzi's lips shifted into an ear-wide grin, and full-blown wicked.

Almost as if he'd known how much this one job would be the trigger for consequences much graver than Lincoln could guess.

…

Sara's birthday was an especially strategic event, the year of the campaign. October 31st. Only a week after the third and final presidential debate, and just a couple of weeks before election day –

It was amusing enough, having Kellerman planning that day for her over the phone, without so much as thinking to ask if she had other plans, or if she actually intended to make it into a popularity-booster. "Just a precaution," he was sure to specify. "After those debates, no one's got the least doubt about where to put their votes. But _more_ good press can't hurt."

And so, Sara spent her morning at the Charity Center – _nothing better for people to love you than going back to your roots_ , Kellerman assured, obviously unaware the place meant anything special to her. Seeing Michael was both an awful knot of tension in her stomach and an unplanned delight. Of course, this was a televised event, though the Center had been taken by (relative) surprise, getting Charles's approval the preceding evening.

All the while that Sara was smiling her way through unpacking boxes and delivering meals – funny how a camera's eye could take the pleasure from even the activities you were most fond of – her pulse was setting worldwide records.

When she spotted Michael with the corner of her eye, carrying boxes, not looking at her –

 _(If I so much as blush, I'm doomed, they'll know, everyone currently watching television will know)_

Wishing she could rush time forward, battling against any tremor in her hands that would betray nervousness, as she poured a brimming ladle of chicken soup into small plates, one after the other.

When at last, it was over, and Sara was safe, in the privacy of her own bedroom, she let out a full ten-second exhale. It was late, though not late enough that she thought she might wake Michael when she called – naturally, it had been impossible to call sooner. Her day had ended somewhere near midnight, after a dinner with Paul that had dragged on and turned into something of a premature celebration.

Sara didn't like those, really. Wasn't superstitious and yet, there'd been a bad feeling in her stomach when Paul had said, oddly without his joking-tone on –

"What an honor to be dining with you, Madam President."

Of course, even though it was the only part of the day that Paul hadn't planned to be for show, it _had_ been a show, for Sara, all the same.

Which was maybe why she didn't resist dialing Michael's number, even if by all standards, it was sheer self-indulgence on her part.

"Hi," Michael's voice was its usual great quiet, an ocean where the smoothest waves carry you to immediate happiness. "Happy birthday."

Sara smiled. Now, between the four walls of her bedroom, it was safe enough to smile. "Jesus. I feel so relieved it's over."

"Paul let you off the hook yet? Didn't suggest you spend the night playing vigilante, driving around in your limo and feeding the homeless?"

"Don't _tease_."

"It's just so pointless," Michael said, with such an absence of reproach or mockery that Sara never thought to resent it. "The people already love you. They couldn't love you _more_ if you rescued a baby from drowning."

"I'm just glad that example occurred to you and not Kellerman."

"Ha."

For a short moment, both were silent, aware of the sudden need to see each other whose liveliness increased with each second.

Honestly, all Sara had had in mind after hearing her boyfriend's voice was badly needed sleep.

Yet the sound of each other's breathing and tense silence had led to a definite turn in both their minds.

 _If we were standing face to face right now_ , she thought, _it would be one of those moments when we're trying to talk but we simply see that's not going to be possible until we've gotten something else out of the way_ –

"You've got plans for the evening, Scofield?"

Occasionally, Sara would still try to be reasonable, would fight off the urge as long as she might – sometimes pushing it back as far as ten minutes of conversation before she caved in and told him to meet her in half an hour.

But tonight was no time for a show of endurance.

When you thought about it, the faster she surrendered, the sooner she'd be back in her own bed and resting.

Resistance had never seemed more pointless and out of reach.

…

They agreed to meet at one of their regulars, an anonymous enough motel where Michael would make a phone registration, before he'd pick up the keys at the reception and wait for her in the room, after texting her the right number. Sara liked this one best, because of the view – not to say that the surroundings were especially sophisticated. Quite the reverse. The motel rooms, whose doors were a deep shade of red (the very color of sin if you'd set your mind on finding one for it), were elevated and accessed by a funnily winding stair, more rust than metal. But Sara liked making her way up it, watching her steps – how anticlimactic if she were to break her neck and just elude the presidency by a few weeks? – before she would finally reach the right room. Push open the door (no knocking, no words of warning), and there would be her lover, waiting in the darkness, sultry eyes planted on her, blue fragments of gleaming stars shining in the soft lighting.

And the view, from the window? Nothing but the parking lot, deserted to the point that it'd make a decent sequence in a post-apocalyptic flic, and an uninhabited building whose shabbiness Sara had gotten used to, had actually even gotten to like.

"It's like we're alone in the world," she'd told Michael once, when he wanted to know what was so special about it – not like she of all people hadn't been privy to better sights in Chicago.

She might be fighting against an elitist government, she was from the elite herself, and wouldn't have gotten so far if that hadn't been the case. Often, it takes an insider to tear a structure down, however slim the odds are that someone that's been raised to silver spoons and caviar – _the only way to really be rid of the cliché is through self-derision, ladies and gentlemen_ – will actually care about a people they've been disconnected from all their lives.

One in a million, Michael would probably say.

He liked to call her that, _My one in a million_ , and whether he was referring to the odds of meeting the right person in love or a politician whose views he actually adhered to, Sara couldn't say; didn't think, really, that it made a difference.

 _Probably, it's both_.

Michael might not like the risks that came with her running for president, he loved her at least in part because she'd gotten there, and _why_ –

"Be the change you want to see in the world."

Weren't some beliefs like this worth living by?

The night of Sara's birthday this year was unequivocally superior to the day that had preceded. Michael was the sort of man who didn't require an excuse for generosity – and lovers who seem to take _more_ pleasure in your satisfaction than their own are rare to come by; Sara reckoned you could count them on the fingers of one hand (more of which were made use of tonight than she would have needed to prove her point). So, really, none of what took place in that particular motel room, on that particular night, was unusual by any standards, only pushed to the extreme. Michael's hand closing on her wrist, his warm touch contrasting with the firm strength of his hold, when she tried to touch him –

He would rarely let her touch him until long after he'd started touching her.

Sara's heartbeat was racing too fast to establish any plausible hypothesis –

His revenge on her? ( _See how_ you _like to wait for me, dear_ )

– but the fact, plain and simple, was that Michael proved an especially apt tease, and the couple didn't get around to conversation for a longer while than they'd planned.

"How long," Michael asked, "before you have to go?"

Sara checked the time on her cell phone, which lay quietly minding its own business on the bedside table.

"Oh," a sigh escaped her, and she started dressing at once – still holding her phone in one hand, reflexively thumbing the screen to unwind the list of news events whose gaudy titles flashed her by, five by the second. "I should already be gone."

Michael nodded without complaint.

The origami rose was tucked carefully in his coat pocket. Since he'd made it, after another one of those sleepless-hotel-nights, there had been several occasions to give it to her – but none, he'd ultimately found, which had been _quite right_.

It'd be hard for him to explain why it mattered to him on such a level – why he couldn't simply brush the gesture away and give her the flower as a _by the by_ moment, why it just didn't seem to call for a random parenthesis from their rushed limited time together. Why it had to be _special_.

 _Not like it's an engagement ring I'm keeping in there_ , Michael thought without humor – because part of him felt that was exactly like it.

That no symbol, ring or other, could better embody the permanence of his feelings than this spontaneously crafted piece of origami. The idea was amusing; Michael didn't think to stop himself from smiling.

Over the screen of her telephone – that woman was addicted to reading the news like some are addicted to drugs or booze – Sara smiled, too, giving her face an especially young and lovely look. For a second, you'd forget she wasn't just any twenty-nine-year-old, whose mind might still be caught in near adolescent immaturity, and who might party on their birthday as they had when they were eighteen. Short skirts. Tequila. Only the choice of music from the nineties and its discrepancy with the current atmosphere, which had moved and changed faster than the birthday person could realize, would give you a real hint as to the passing of time.

"A penny for your thoughts?" She asked.

"I'm feeling generous. You can have them for free."

Sara hadn't put on more than her skirt and pantyhose by then. Michael suddenly felt it would be criminal she should add any more layers before he'd touched her again.

Though the room was unlit, Sara had moved close enough to the window that he could see her well enough in the moonlight. That drew his attention to the fact that the drapes weren't drawn – something they were both usually careful about.

Oh, but the room was at least three stories above the parking lot, and anyone wandering around there – provided anyone actually roamed parking lots at such ungodly hours – would only see a shadowy figure at the window, if he had good enough eyes to make out anything at all in the darkness.

Then, there was that uninhabited building immediately opposite theirs, but deserted places are deserted for a reason –

"Please," Sara said, pulling him from his thoughts, and reaching for his cheek with her palm.

Michael was only vaguely aware to have moved behind her and locked his hands around her bare stomach. Holding her was natural, so exquisitely familiar – you'd think they'd spent years together, getting used to each other. Sleeping alone now was like sinning against the highest laws of nature.

"Don't get distracted, now."

"What?"

Prickling sensations broke loose in Michael's body at the sound of Sara's laughter. He didn't think to ask what was so amusing – possibly, he sounded boyish or unfocused. One can only go on without sleep for so long before the brain starts following its strange fancies.

"You were going to tell me something."

"Nothing in particular, I'm sure."

" _Yes_." She objected. In the window, Michael could see a vague reflection of her face and nude upper body, saw his own hands tracing the curve of her breasts before he was conscious of his own will guiding them there. "You were going to tell me why you were looking at me like that, just then."

Shrugging his shoulders. "Like…?"

"Don't play innocent."

Michael sighed. "Governor Tancredi, you're far too clever for me. Have mercy, woman."

"Mercy is nice," she admitted. "But nice girls finish last. I prefer justice."

The vibrancy in her tone as she spoke that last word – _justice_ – conveying such undisputable power, and so effortlessly, sounded inexplicably arousing to Michael's ears.

He might as well give in.

Though he hadn't yet told her about the train of thought that had led to his making the flower, either – that Lancelot-and-Guinevere feeling, a desire as old as time to protect the woman he loved, or at the very least, to become part of the world she lived in. No longer tolerating for her to be ungraspable as a shadow, just a pixelized image on a television screen.

 _Pretty soon, I'll have to_.

 _If I'm going to do anything serious about it – I'll have to_.

"Well, all right."

Michael made a show of sighing (did sometimes enjoy the theatrics for which his brother had no patience) before his hands slowly glided away from the soft flesh of Sara's body. Amusement morphed into surprise on Sara's face when she saw him making his way towards the small wardrobe – motel-sized, where there's only room for one set of spare clothes – where Michael had taken the time to hang his coat, before Sara joined him.

By the intense attention she paid his every movement, Michael could tell the young woman was nervous, in her cool, collected way, but he gave her no further hint as he opened the door of the wardrobe and slid his coat off the hanger. In fact, her reaction was far from unpleasant – how more frequent it was for him to be at a disadvantage? This woman knew her way around the world and its inhabitants a little too well, always made it look like she'd been swimming those waters all her life, could make the most of its swift currents where some occasionally drowned. Michael himself was quieter – confident enough to make his way around, but with no born-talent or ambition that might guide him to claim kingship over that wild ocean.

But right _now_ , as Sara's eyes were hooked on him, following his fingers carefully as he reached for the inner jacket of his coat, he'd momentarily, half-accidentally taken control.

"You didn't get me a gift, I hope." Already, her tone was admonishing – and a little worried.

 _Probably_ , Michael thought, _she worries I have an actual ring in there_.

"Relax," he said and meant it. "It's nothing expensive."

"Michael –"

"I know."

"You ought to."

She wasn't wrong. They'd gone through the whole no-birthday-gift speech, where she had carefully listed every reason why she'd hated birthdays for the first two decades of her life. The luxury of unneeded things – jewels, dresses, always things designed to make her look _pretty_ – extravagant meals, mountains of dark-chocolate cream and berries mounted on cakes that had been crafted by renowned chefs. The gifts and food were in themselves strategies. Publicity for this or that famous brand in exchange for funds for Frank's campaign. Every bit of it was hateful, when Sara was already so aware of all those in need around her, the vacant faces of homeless people, so used not to be looked at they didn't seem to really look at _you_ anymore.

Past the age of six or seven, Sara could never eat a single spoonful of cake without the image of hungry people conjuring itself up in her mind. The hungry all around the world and those daily ignored in America.

"Really," Michael promised, with a solemn enough tone to indicate he'd taken her demand seriously. "This is different." The gloom in her eyes stood firm and solid, so he added, "For one, it didn't cost me a penny."

"Oh."

He chuckled at the mix of surprise and puzzlement in her response. In all likelihood, homemade presents were a vague idea in her mind, something she'd merely heard of or which made her think of noodle-necklaces in kindergarten.

"Well, then I suppose –"

Loud knocks were pounded on the entry door of the motel room before she could get any further.

Color drained from her face so radically Michael wanted to laugh – like part of him was watching this happen to other people, in some movie – only his voice was trapped out of his own body, to which he currently felt unconnected as to a random piece of furniture.

More knocks.

Strong and urgent and ominous as the nearing approach of the Apocalypse horsemen.

"Oh God."

Somehow, Michael snapped out of his paralysis as fast as he'd entered it. "Get dressed."

"Michael, I can't be seen here."

"I know."

Still, she grabbed her shirt that had been lying on the floor and buttoned up fast enough to set a record. Her hands, he noticed, didn't shake even under high pressure. If she hadn't turned to politics, she could have been a fine surgeon.

All the while, there had been no more knocks from their nightly visitor. "Hey, this could be a joke," Michael said, struck by a sudden illumination. "Tonight's Halloween. October thirty-first."

"Right." Sara didn't look completely relieved. "A little late to go trick or treating," she remarked.

"Probably a kid messing around, who snuck out of his parents' room."

Michael pressed his eye to the peephole on the door – and suddenly, turned white as Sara had when she'd first heard the knocks.

"What is it?"

Michael's gaze stammered its way back to her, as if what he'd seen was closer to yet another question than an actual answer. He spoke in a voice heavy with disbelief, "It's my brother."

…

 **End Notes** : I really enjoyed writing this chapter. Please let me know your thoughts and theories for later chapters, and note I still take requests if you have ideas for Prison Break fanfictions (one shots or other).


	10. Ice

Michael sat motionless on the edge of the mattress, as Lincoln explained the situation. The tangle of sheets behind him sometimes added a blush to his cheeks when he became aware of it – which was foolish, foolish.

Somehow, his mind could not reconciliate the words that came out of his brother's mouth with reality.

"Abruzzi had his people hack into my phone," Lincoln said, "so he could see the film even as I was filming it. In case I got caught, you know."

Silence stabbed in with every pause he took, so overwhelming, and Sara was so obviously the source, she couldn't have spoken one word of anger that would have been more powerful.

"So I could just delete it and he could have the evidence himself."

"How clever."

While Michael had sat on the motel room bed – had had little choice when his knees started sinking, when he realized just how big, and how _ugly_ , the situation they were in was likely to get – Sara had remained standing. And Michael had to say, he'd never thought how impressive she would look, opposite Lincoln, whose square bulk must amount to at least two of her.

Of course, Sara was tall, taller than a lot of men – that conveniently included Senator Bagwell – and Lincoln's head must only exceed hers by a mere four inches. But that she'd be able to radiate such majesty, right at this moment, with her clothes roughly put on, none of the hairdo and makeup that usually participated to Michael's capacity to tell them apart. Sara-the-woman and Sara-the-politician.

It wasn't until his brother came ominously knocking on the middle of Halloween night, just a couple of weeks before election day, and he witnessed as Sara was caught completely off guard, that Michael realized her awe-inspiring power had nothing artificial.

Part of him wished she had sat down next to him. They should be together in this – they _were_ together in this awful mess his own brother had put them in. There he was, almost before he could realize how – a witness, not just in Sara's life now, but in his own. No television screen between them. If he got up, he could touch her, punch his brother, do as he liked.

Still he sat and watched Sara and Lincoln, facing each other in grandiose battle, the one with coldly curbed ire, the other with a pragmatical air Sara could mistake for indifference – she didn't know Lincoln, didn't know how apologies never communicated to his face.

As if he'd heard the very thoughts as they entered his brother's head, Lincoln said, "I'm sorry." Without particular emphasis or unnecessary feeling. "I didn't know what I'd be doing." Turning to his brother – whom, by all means, he must have trouble looking at in earnest. "I didn't know who she was to you, Mike –"

"And you didn't know you'd be giving John Abruzzi all the right tools to blackmail me into quitting the race?"

Sara's interruption caused Lincoln's eyes to shoot right back at her. Some nameless feeling in Michael's chest burned heavy and red, a red-iron tattoo that told the tale of his impotent shame.

Maybe it was better this way.

"No," Lincoln said. "I knew that."

"Good." Sara sized him up as she spoke, the way you size up spiders when you've decided killing them was cruel.

 _My brother and my lover_. It struck him again, across the face, not so much like a slap than a ninety-mile-an-hour delivery truck, blowing his own brains with what was happening, how huge and irreparable.

 _My God_ , he thought. _My God_.

"How much?" Sara asked. "I've always wanted to know the price people put on this sort of things. How much to follow me around? To violate my privacy? To hide in some building and watch me making love to your brother?"

"Sara –"

"Oh, Michael. You really think anything I can _say_ will make this awkward?"

Her eyes were back on Lincoln, full force, like with Bagwell during the debates.

When his own brother played the part of her adversary, how could Michael be her ally?

Lincoln didn't answer her question, but not out of shame. There was no point, right now, in naming any price – none, however dear to him (or to Michael) could sound worthy.

"There's no way I can justify what I did," he said. "The only thing I can do is warn you, and promise you one day, I _will_ pay my debt to you."

"Considering who you get your money from, I'm not sure I want payment."

Sara released Lincoln from her gaze at last. Oxygen rushed into Michael's lungs, as if he'd been the one standing trial just then.

Sara then moved towards the door, where her purse lay, a couple of feet into the room. Probably, the remembrance of dropping it as she and Michael kissed hungrily was alive and breathing in her brain, as in Michael's, still she didn't blush, didn't look down.

Michael couldn't see how she didn't take part in his shame at all – couldn't understand how a single experience could have caused such a profound split.

But then it struck him, they hadn't been through the same thing at all.

Michael had been betrayed by a brother, and his latest action just came at the top of a tall hill of misconduct.

Sara had been spied on by a stranger even as she was at her most scandalous, and the stakes were the highest in the country – the stakes were the American presidency.

It was only when she motioned towards the door that Michael realized she might actually walk out of here without adding a word. "Sara." He called.

What an idiot.

What a dumb fish pining for a sea queen.

"I have to call Paul," she said.

Yes, _Paul_.

Paul was the man to call in such a situation.

When you thought about it (as Michael did), Paul was the man who truly shared Sara's life. Surely, she spent more hours with him on the phone in one day than she spent in motel rooms with him in a full week.

Friendship was a starter, but certainly not the main course – Paul was much more _important_ than a friend. He was her problem-solver, her strategy-thinker. The man who trained her when she needed to strengthen her arguments, who bruised her so her skin would toughen up.

 _Paul_ could help her make it in this world. Knew his way around it, knew the sharks that needed to be fought to death and those who needed to be won over.

Paul was her man of action.

"Governor –" Lincoln interceded before she could reach the door.

The look Sara gave him was nearly all anger – which was just another reason why she needed to leave, Michael reckoned.

Maybe he didn't know the exact colors of her childhood in all its subtle forms, but he knew enough – knew Sara was too well-used to keeping her emotions in check to tolerate such outbursts within herself.

"I only wanted to say, if I cost you the presidency –"

"You didn't cost me the presidency." Sara didn't flinch, didn't bat an eye. "You dumped one stinky pile of garbage on my red carpet, for sure, but I'll get through that. Senator Bagwell should have spent more time on his own strategy rather than thinking he could blackmail his competition."

Sara added just one more thing before she closed – not quite slamming – the door on her way out.

"I haven't gotten where I am now so some racist pig could _manhandle_ me into backing down."

…

 **End Notes** : I realize some parts of this chapter may have looked unusual to you. When you have a situation in fiction when a man watches as his woman is offended, you usually get more action from the man, but this is precisely one of the things I wanted to tackle. When you think about it, Sara plays the male part in that story, and Michael's stuck with a typically feminine role – he's passive and can't really compete with Sara or _protect_ her, which is the naturally male thing to do.

At first, I believed I was going to write something typical like this, merely out of habit, but in the end, I thought: how much more awful would it be for him to just stand there, helpless, which is what he can only feel in that situation? How much more _real_?

What interests me about this story is writing a female politician who's not all about love-interests, and a male character who's struggling to play an active role in her world but is ill-equipped for it. Michael will get there, don't worry ;). And he _will_ confront Lincoln about what he did. I just feel this is a story that's been written so many times before, the least I can do is write it differently.

Please share your thoughts on this and on the chapter in general! Best to you all.


	11. Origins

The look on Kellerman's face was something Sara had never seen before, although she'd suspected it to exist in a half-aware manner. Because Paul Kellerman was the sort of man who received insults with a smile, it wasn't ridiculous to think there was an inward face behind that political mask who never _smiled_ , who dealt you the kind of looks that turn people to stone, eyes dark with the grave seriousness of hurricanes, thunderstorms, awe-inspiring sights.

But Sara refused to be _awed_ by Kellerman.

Not only because of how much it would flatter him…

Because regardless of the genuine affection they both knew to exist, her relationship with Kellerman was one of power, and always had been.

He didn't say, _I'm sorry, can you repeat that?_ or anything easy, didn't speak for the sake of breaking the silence.

"Is there anything more I should know?"

"No." She answered.

After a moment, "How long has this been going on?"

"I don't see how that would help you get me out of my predicament."

"Really?" Not feigning surprise. His face was a crude lack of sociable charisma, was nearly unrecognizable. "Why, it's the heart of it. Your _predicament_. We're not just talking blackmail here. Or did you think this was an isolated problem?"

Both of them were standing, the chairs opposite and behind Paul's office dwarfish spectators to their confrontation.

Kellerman had agreed to meet her without asking questions when she'd called him. He'd suggested her office, but his was closer to the motel, not that she said _that_ right away, or got near explaining the situation to him until they were face to face.

Although Sara could feel the latent heat between them, she remained calm and – she knew how crucial this was – unembarrassed. Paul had been her friend for too long for her not to know what a formidable opponent he was. The force in his silence was real and she knew, any second now, he might try to seize control.

"I was too proud," he said, his eyes steady into hers. "I trusted you too much. Oh, every political career has its weaknesses – skeletons in the closet, you know. _Every one_. So, in ways, this is my fault. I should have known you had yours." A short sigh. "Self-confidence gets the tallest giants, doesn't it? I told myself you were different, that if there was anything that could jeopardize you, you'd tell me. Most politicians meet their downfall because they don't treat their advisors to the full truth, like modesty's something they're entitled to as much as your average fellow. I thought that was clear, Sara."

The hairs in the nape of her neck prickled, but she still had her jacket on, so he wouldn't see her arms breaking into gooseflesh. Which was good. Now was no time to show weakness.

Still, she didn't like how he'd spoken her name just now.

"I'm your partner," he said. "There doesn't have to be love between us. There doesn't have to be fondness. The only thing there _has_ to be is a complete absence of secrets."

Silence resumed between them. Sara wanted to take her time – knew how timing was important, how some things shouldn't rushed. If her voice came out shrill and indignant, she would lose. If her eyes betrayed anger, humiliation, any of the myriad of emotions that had been boiling in her tonight, she would _lose_.

"My dear Paul." She said. "What a great misunderstanding there must have been for you to tell me the things you just did."

Though she turned the reproach on him, he didn't look ashamed, either, or lower his eyes – she hadn't expected him to.

"Let us get one thing clear, if you're going to continue working for me. I won't be intimidated by you. I'm not a school girl you caught with my pants down after curfew. I didn't come here tonight because I wanted your opinion on how I lead my private life – which I intend to hold on to, president or not. The blame is mine if you didn't know that."

Kellerman shifted on his feet.

Such a slight, unnoticeable shift – the weight of your own body uncomfortable, the urge to recoil under assault.

"Your job now is to advise me. To assist me. When I get a call from Senator Bagwell's people, and they want to meet, I want you with me, because getting people through crisis is what you do best." She paused briefly, for effect. "If you can't fix this, or if you don't want to be a part of this, you tell me. What you don't do, don't ever do, is _boss_ me."

She fell silent, their eyes not a battle but a mutual appraisal – she knew Paul didn't really need to be won over, nor would she fire him for the things he'd said tonight.

From the rare flicker of heat in his cool gaze, Sara could tell he wasn't done. That he was furious she'd jeopardize her career to have an affair with some man who'd never pass the test of public life, and more so at the fact that she had tried to keep it from him.

 _Kellerman's too involved_. It was a thought that crossed Sara's mind, sometimes, when the truth was just too obvious for her to look the other way. She'd always known this, just as she'd known it might eventually become a problem.

But Kellerman was too good at his job for her to want to part with him. What was more, he was a man she trusted, in a peculiar way – not because she knew him to be of an incorruptible character. No. Paul could be a bastard as could most politicians worth their salt in this world.

But she didn't think he would betray her.

Getting her to the oval had been his life purpose.

She'd known this, even as he acted surprised when she broke the news of her running for president on live television.

There was nothing Kellerman wouldn't do, nothing he would shrink from, if it served that purpose.

The people you could count on so utterly were rare, Sara knew, in this line of work. Had seen it happen too many times, to her father and others. On those days, she remembered her father's lips would be so pinched at dinner, she would wonder how he even managed to get the food through.

Even in Sara's own career, there had been a number of double-crossing, disappointments if not outright betrayals.

But not from Paul.

She knew this, in the same way she knew she ought to be cautious, that Kellerman might be even more coldblooded than he seemed.

Another thought sometimes flashed through her brain – _he loves me_ – but she always managed to push it back far enough that she could fool him, if not herself, that she didn't know this.

"How much did they get on tape?" He asked.

"Too much, I'm afraid. And there's no tape. Just a phone video." She shrugged. "Modernity."

Kellerman nodded. "I'll need to see it."

"Yes."

So would she.

"We need a strategy ready for when Bagwell's people contact us, and I can't plan one until I've seen it. I need to determine if there's any way we can pass this as a hoax, ignore it completely."

Sara didn't signify approval. There was no need to. There'd been no need for him to justify himself in the first place – but she felt slightly reassured that he had. Always enjoyed the times when Kellerman's conduct reminded her he was only human.

Sara pulled her phone out of her purse, breaking eye-contact with Kellerman for the first time since she'd entered his office tonight. Now was safe enough to lower her guard, she knew; power had been fully restored to her side.

"Who are you calling?"

"The man who's responsible – who took the video, I mean."

"By the way." He was cautious; didn't make this sound like a question. "Will we need to buy him off? Even if we make a deal with Bagwell, his handyman will be a liability. In a couple of years, when you're in the middle of your first term, he might decide he wants to make some money out of this."

"That's not going to happen." She trusted this completely, although she'd not gotten a particularly flattering image of Lincoln's character.

Sara knew how to read people, and there had been enough genuineness in his rough, pragmatic apology to convince her he meant it, would cut his own arm off if he could take back what had happened tonight. And yet, he hadn't looked pathetic.

She had respect for people who held their own.

Unfortunately, not for those who followed women at night and contributed to their public undoing.

"He can meet us here," Kellerman said, which was merely a way of suggesting the place for their rendezvous without commanding her.

 _He probably thinks he has more power than I know_.

"Yes," Sara said, "it sounds appropriate."

"And…" The pause was full silence, no cleared throats or audible hesitation. "There's no need for anyone else to join us, I suppose."

"If you mean my lover, it hadn't occurred to me to ask him."

To call Michael _her lover_ in front of Kellerman and keep a straight face was a small challenge, the sort Sara knew how to pass without effort.

There were few other options.

 _Boyfriend_ would have made her sound too much like a girl, and she'd rather that Kellerman didn't learn Michael's name at all if possible.

However much he allowed her to feel she was in control, she knew Kellerman could grow dangerous, from the shadows, and wouldn't shy away from scaring off anyone who got in her way to the presidency – including Michael.

And the means he'd use would be nothing like a protective father who meets his daughter's boyfriend.

Kellerman, she had no doubt, could be a very scary man.

…

With Sara gone, the motel room had a surreal, cheap feel to it. The dim lighting, the ruffled sheets, the glare of moonlight out the window.

Michael hadn't moved from the edge of the mattress, his legs turned to roots. It had been bad, sitting there with Sara standing up to Lincoln, but now that there was no presence, no sound or life in the room but the two brothers, it was worse.

"I'm sorry."

Lincoln didn't generally see the point in repetition, but it sounded different from before, in the absence of any witness or judge. _Younger_. Like all the times Michael had heard him say this before.

At juvie camp, jail, Fox River.

How young were they when it started? Michael had only been eleven the first time he'd visited Lincoln at that youth detention center – he'd had to take a bus after school and ride forty minutes out of town. His parents had been furious at him when the warden called them, but not to see Lincoln every day for a week had been to Michael like an ordeal, one you don't get used to. The empty chair at their dinner table put a boulder in his stomach, too stiff to eat.

Lincoln had been happy to see him, even under such circumstances – with so many people around, and a few guards standing by the door. To Michael, it didn't look so different from the school cafeteria at the strike of noon. All the inmates here, after all, were under eighteen.

Lincoln had given him no nonsense about how he shouldn't have come here, although he had spoken the now meaningless words, "I'm sorry you have to see me like this."

 _Like what?_ Michael had meant to ask. Apart from the odd clothes – an orange jumpsuit and white tee-shirt – Lincoln looked everything like his ordinary self.

After a while of silence, Michael had looked at his brother, very solemn for an eleven-year-old. But yet again, Michael was always the overly earnest type. "I came to get you out of here," he said.

Lincoln had laughed – had a way of laughing that wasn't light amusement or mockery. His own face was earnest, as he looked at his brother. Lincoln laughed the way other people say _I love you_.

"Did you, now, you little rascal?"

But Michael wouldn't have his promise treated as a joke. He'd given much thought to this. "No, it's simple," he spoke in a low tone, no whispers, careful not to draw the guards' attention. In a conspiracy-laden casual move, he placed a bottle of water on the table.

Lincoln had furrowed his brows. "What this?"

"I've mixed it with a few drops of Ipecac."

"Of what?"

"Ipecac. It's a drug that makes you vomit."

A long, low sigh. There could have been no more fondness in any spoken word. "Mike…"

"It's very quick. When you've had a few swallows they'll take you to the infirmary. I can wait outside the window. I brought a rope –"

"Michael."

"It can work."

"No doubt it can." Lincoln said, with a ready belief Michael hadn't expected. He thought this would need some convincing. "And then what? Back to mom and dad? I'll just be on my way back here tomorrow, no different except for the belt stripes on my ass. Those, I could do without."

"We can hide."

"What you can do is go to school and study your brains out, because that's what works out for you." Lincoln shrugged. "It's bad enough that you have to wait this out, Mike – but you can't ruin your own life because of what I do. You understand that?"

At the time, Michael was pretty sure he didn't.

Now, sitting in that motel room, the air heavy and hot as in a jungle, there was a new ring to those fresh, faraway words.

"I'm so sorry, Michael."

The voice of his brother was sincere as ever, the same deep shade of repentance he was used to – but it was wrong, wrong in a way Michael had never thought to notice.

Apologies aren't supposed to get so _familiar_.

"Don't say that," Michael said. "Not this time. Not for this."

He got to his feet at last. The motel room was spinning, the unglamorous décor of this absurd act – tragedy or comedy? Often, Michael found the only difference between those was whether the audience was laughing, and not what was taking place.

Surely, William Shakespeare could have spun a funny story around this.

Brotherly betrayal, scandalous exposures, sex, impotence! That last one was funny, wasn't it? The woman walking out with her dignity intact and the man sitting still and silent, his mind wrecked, his privacy violated; the Elizabethans would have had some good laughs over this.

If he punched Lincoln now, would he break his hand, would he miss, would he hear the laughing of the crowd, deafening in his ears?

Michael picked up his shirt, started buttoning up. "You say that, and what follows is forgiveness – always. So don't say it, Linc, a'right? Not when I can't forgive you."

But a deeper truth flashed through his brain.

 _Not when it reminds me that, however long it takes me, I_ _will_.

"It was supposed to be over," Lincoln said. "Abruzzi would have me do this one thing – then he'd give me an honest job, and I never had to go through this again."

"This one thing?" Michael said.

All that needed saying.

"Don't stop by the apartment tonight, okay? You can come pick up your stuff later when I'm at work." Michael fished for his wallet inside his coat, which he was half-busy sliding on. Every move felt cold, dead, unnatural. "Here," after he'd pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. "You can save it for when you need a place to sleep tomorrow. Until then, you might want to walk it out, I guess – or you can stay here. The room's paid for."

"I don't need your money."

"Sure you do. And I won't be seeing you for a while, so you better take it."

Right now, in that cold, unfeeling mind that felt alien to love and memory, it didn't strike Michael as cruel that he and Lincoln would part over a bank note.

Heck, maybe it was even funny, if you wanted to look at this like some great comedy. It was impossible for Michael to tell whether in the future, tears or laughter would be more likely for him, so estranged he felt from human feeling.

Lincoln's hands remained chained to his side, his eyes level with his brother's.

Michael felt slightly vexed that Lincoln didn't take the bill, or break down sobbing – anything that would rival with his own humiliation.

"Okay," Michael said. "Bye then."

Their love for each other was worth a better ending than this, but anything more solemn, even _goodbye,_ would have risked coming off as melodramatic.

"I'll make this right, Michael." Lincoln said as his brother reached for the knob.

"Sure you will."

"If I don't, I won't bother you again. But I will fix this."

"Sure you will."

He hadn't halted so, when he said the words again, he was halfway through the door, and the end got lost in its closing – polite habit made Michael resist the satisfaction of a full slam.

Through the corridors, which were an unfortunate yellowish beige, Michael was still full of that surreal feeling, like he was walking inside a dream.

Some people are reborn in pain and hardship, some are born again as Christians – suddenly, Michael felt this could be the start to anything.

To himself, maybe even only in the cage of his own mind, he said, "This is my origin story."

His hands sunk deep in his coat pockets, the hundred-dollar bill crumpled in his fist.

He never thought to notice Sara's origami rose was missing.

…

Alone, in the motel room, Lincoln picked up the paper-flower that lay on the ground, by the bed. Memory burned like hot iron in his brain –

 _Who's this for?_

 _My secret lover._

Michael was right. _I'm sorry_ were threadbare words, words he'd spoken too many times – words that couldn't be applied to this new, worse-than-all situation.

Lincoln put the origami rose in the pocket of his coat, just at the right time that he could feel his phone vibrate with the tip of his fingers.

He picked up even as he glimpsed the UNKNOWN CALLER on his screen.

"Did you delete the video?" Sara asked before he could say, 'Hello'. It probably wasn't in order.

"No."

"Good. I'm going to need for you to meet me at an office downtown. I'd appreciate it if you used the underground. No cab. We understand each other?"

"Perfectly."

"I'll text you the address."

She hung up without further delay. Lincoln resisted the sleep-deprived urge in his mind that looked to blackness, that suggested he should crumble and this time never bother to pick up the pieces.

Nothing would undo what he had taken part in doing tonight. But if he played his cards right, if he played _smart_ , then maybe he could fix it. Maybe there was still a way that he could be redeemed.

…

 **End Notes** : this story is turning into a real favorite of mine. Please share your thoughts. I've got such plans for these characters ;)


	12. Curiouser and Curiouser

"Pleasure to see you, Miss Tancredi –"

"Please, Senator. I don't think formalities are in order at this point."

The four people took their respective seats, with Sara and Kellerman behind the office, Theodore Bagwell and John Abruzzi on the visitors' side.

Below surface, Sara's blood was boiling at the sight of Bagwell's triumphant grin, but a lot of times – this time, at least – the surface was what mattered.

Of course, each side acted with a confidence that indicated their sure victory in that race for the oval. Come to think of it, Sara was rather grateful that Senator Bagwell had been the one to run against her, even if it had led to all of this – the world of politics was all greys and concessions, and it was rare enough you had the utmost certainty you were fighting off someone _really_ evil.

 _Gotta like a challenge_ , Sara thought.

Of course, that didn't make the sight of Bagwell's smirk, or the strong smell of his perfume ( _Angel_ ) any more tolerable.

"Well," Abruzzi was the one to start. "Let us get to business, shall we?"

As Sara had never met John Abruzzi before, she spent more attention on him than on Bagwell, who was a waste of effort, anyway, with his smug satisfaction – it was like he expected, because he'd watched an illicitly taken video that showed her without her clothes on, that she would cower in front of him, stare blushing at the desk like a young virgin.

Abruzzi, now, was more interesting – his manly authority puffed up by an Armani suit, black, like Bagwell's. He hadn't made even a disguised effort to look like a man of second importance here. Lank, shoulder-length hair gave his face a peculiar frame, from which his direct blue eyes stared unflinchingly at her. Domineering though not patronizing, and certainly not delighting in what he supposed to be her humiliation.

 _Yes_ , Sara thought, _that's more like it._

Wasn't it fitting, if she was going to consider stepping down from the race (like a disgraced Queen desperate to save her honor), that she should know who she was _really_ putting in the White House?

Naturally, Abruzzi himself appraised the pair before him, and Sara watched as he wondered if Kellerman was the real authority here… How traditional.

 _Let him think what he will_.

"Business," Theodore Bagwell agreed, maybe to fend off the impression that his associate was speaking for him, "is why we're all here. It's been a long night for all of us…" This while giving Sara an imperceptible Cheshire grin. "We won't take more of your time than we need to. None of us, I'm sure, wants to make a nasty affair out of this."

"Your video's good," Sara said.

There was a slight eyebrow-raising on Bagwell's face. Shocked with her directness and lack of modesty. It was all very well with her.

"Not perfect, but good. Not that it matters," she went on. "You might have been in that motel room getting close ups of every single body part you fancied." The utter absence of hesitation in her voice at this point was crucial. "I won't back down. Because you think you can manhandle me into doing just that, because you think your exposing that I have a sex life and a body would be enough leverage, you make my stance all the stronger."

"Now –" Bagwell cut in.

"Leak that video if you like." Sara shrugged. "Which of us do you think will come out looking the worst for it? Because it'll be clear, I'll _make_ it clear, you're the only person it could have come from. As things are, Senator, you're already coming off as a bully – don't make yourself into a tyrant. You still have a political career, and you can try and take the presidency from me four years from now. You might run again for the next thirty years. We both know retirement comes late in our line of work. Let's be honest about one thing. This would be a scandal for the both of us – and however damaging it would be to me, it'll be irreparable to you."

A vague noise climbed out of Abruzzi's throat and all the way to his lips. It took Sara a moment to identify it as laughter.

Not that she herself was in the mood for laughs.

The four opponents had agreed to meet at eight a.m. sharp, at Kellerman's office, where they had met Lincoln a mere few hours before.

There, he'd given them his phone and stepped outside as she and Kellerman watched the video – he'd done that of his own initiative, to his credit – and they'd both decided it would be impossible to dismiss it as a hoax. It was clear from the first, and they didn't waste time on discussing it; even in dim lighting, the video showed too much, and looked too genuine. Too many people would look at it and argue it was real, and for Sara to lie now, when she'd run a campaign on transparency, might very well make Bagwell's rugged charisma and down-to-earth personality look appealing.

There'd been no need for Lincoln to take part in their deliberations, and Sara had sent him out without delay, and without asking news about Michael…

Though she could see in Lincoln's stony, feelingless gaze, that the break between the brothers had been deep enough – she couldn't, for the time being, deal with two crises at once. She must fight it on the public front before she could worry about what this had done to her private life – to the man she loved.

You wouldn't think, looking at her, what a night she'd had, the sleeplessness and the emotional thunderstorm, and the intense work she'd gone through with Kellerman, coming up with a defense plan.

Bagwell and Abruzzi were _meant_ to look at her and marvel at her untiring, undefeatable will.

They were meant to think her a force to be reckoned with.

Abruzzi's eyes were shining with intelligence. Ten, thirty seconds of silence, as he determined how to handle this.

"Don't think for a second," he said, "that I have no respect for how you're taking this. I admire courage, in women especially."

Sara didn't repress a sigh (it was strategic).

How cheap.

He should know _she_ knew he was assuming a paternalistic role as a lowly attempt to subdue her.

And the iron grit in her eyes and face said, _It won't do_.

"But let's get real," Abruzzi said. "Let's get _real_. Do serious careers ever start with a sex scandal?"

"Sex scandals are bad," Bagwell volunteered.

"Please," Kellerman sighed, "don't mention Clinton."

"Well, I don't see why I wouldn't when it's such a perfect way to illustrate my meaning."

"Clinton was a radically different affair," Kellerman said, sharp and quick. Efficient. "Poles apart. Clinton _lied_. There are so many ways we can spin this to our advantage –"

Abruzzi laughed; again, in a strange choking noise. "That's a little too much."

Still below surface, Sara's heartbeat spiked up with excitement.

 _That's it_. _Show me what you are_. _Drop the mask and the velvet gloves_.

"I have your candidate on camera _screwing_ some guy's brains out. You fellows want to negotiate, that's fine, but as we're a little old for make-believe – even you, Governor – let's not pretend we aren't all perfectly aware I've got you by the balls."

"How appropriate you should use that image," Sara cut in. Cool, no artificial coldness. Abruzzi fell silent for a moment and – _yes_ – resumed studying her with dissatisfied eyes. "Nudity's bad in America, isn't it? So bad you'd think the presidency, a job that is going to be a matter of life and death for countless people throughout the world – you'd think it would all be jeopardized because of balls or tits."

Bagwell's brows arched in pointy triangles over his eyes. On occasions, Sara had seen the real cleverness in those eyes, how they wrinkled trying to figure her out, but right now, it was dumb and plain surprise.

"So it comes down to a wager, really," she said. "It comes down to our beliefs in the people… And I _don't_ believe they're going to care all that much about your sex tape. In fact, I think they're tired of being treated like a fickle mob incapable of genuine reflection – tired of being given games and bread while the leaders of the free world live like monarchs in a crystal kingdom."

"You're still new to this game, Governor." Abruzzi remarked.

"Yes, I am new. _New_ got me as far as I am now. It'll get me elected."

"And you don't think that becoming an internet porn queen a couple of weeks before the vote will distract the people from your credibility as a national leader?"

Still with a carefree smile, Sara shrugged her shoulders.

"You're bluffing, Governor." Abruzzi said after a moment. "You don't think I'll leak it… You think you've convinced me you'd make it look as bad for us as it will for you."

"If you get your kicks out of starting scandals, go ahead. You want to end your candidate's career in shame – because the shame _will_ be his – don't let me stop you. It'd be more clever to wait another four years for him to get his chance, and you strike me as someone clever enough, John. But I've been mistaken before."

"I despise flattery," said John.

"And I despise flatterers."

She wouldn't call him clever if she didn't mean it. She hadn't called Bagwell clever, for example, although she could see he had his moments – was more of a threat than he might seem at first glimpse.

"A'right," Abruzzi sighed. "Let me tell you how this'll go down." He didn't pause for effect; not now. Maybe it was tiredness, or premature vexation at his plan's failure – he must have expected a different attitude from her tonight. In any case, the theatrics seemed to have been drained out of him. "I'm going to give you twenty-four hours. Time is running short, and I'm aware of this – in one week, America will be voting for its new president, so I can't give you much longer to consider our deal."

"I don't need time."

"Yes you do. Think about every person you know, Governor. Think about your career – your future in general. Talk to revenge porn victims. Consider every sphere of your life that's going to be affected by this. Oh, and I don't mean just the death and rape threats that'll pile up in your mailbox. But while you're at it – think about those too."

Abruzzi got on his feet. Senator Bagwell didn't immediately imitate him, like a docile lap dog – instead, he sat and looked at Sara, for a long while, as if to say –

 _You want to tell me again, love, that this_ isn't _about power?_

Sara sat still, head high, the curve of her jaw and chin statuesque, unwavering.

There'd be time to waver, later today.

"Let's meet here again tomorrow," Abruzzi glanced at his watch, "at eight fifteen. We can start talking in earnest – there can be room for you in Bagwell's government."

An audible scoff from Kellerman. Abruzzi didn't glance at him – held eye-contact with Sara until he was finished.

"You care about the lives of the helpless, Governor. How about travelling the world, negotiating peace between Palestine and Israel, starting programs to feed the hungry? You'd make a fine Secretary of State. You're still young. Very young. Think of this as a win-win situation – letting my candidate have his term while you're gaining experience. Like I said, I admire your courage, and I do think America will elect you president, one day."

"And I suppose," Sara said, "you'd want as strong a say in my government as you'll get in your current candidate's?"

Abruzzi cocked his head to the side. "You can't have gotten as far as you have in the world of politics not to know who rules the world, Governor. I'll see you in twenty-four hours."

Then, Bagwell did get up, after giving the room an appreciative glance – like this was his office. Like he was about to own every inch of this country. He cracked open the door and slid out like a shadow (or like the vanishing cat in _Alice_ that leaves nothing behind but its grin).

Abruzzi followed close after his candidate, but he stopped shortly at the door, drumming his fingers over the wall.

He turned back to Sara and spoke his first and last compliment, as some kind of unpremeditated musing.

"The apple," he said, "sure fell far from the tree."

…

 **End Notes** : I know I played Sara very confident here, but it makes sense for me to think she would have gotten there if she'd been dealing in politics for years (just remember how she used T-Bag's erectile dysfunction to manipulate him at the end of season 4) so I'd argue it's not out of character at all. I could definitely see her pulling this off ;-). The title is a reference to Lewis Carroll's _Alice in Wonderland_.

I also wanted to say thanks so much for all the kind guest reviews, this sort of support means the world to me. To answer some of your questions, yes, this should be a long story and I intend to update at least one chapter per week. Please let me know your thoughts on this chapter. I'm so excited about what's coming!


	13. Into the Dance

Lincoln smoked cigarette after cigarette, as he waited alone, at the appointed _rendezvous_ place – a chalk-grey warehouse, framed by a parking lot that was empty but for bird droppings, the occasional empty bottle, half-hidden in a bush, and the cigarette butts that pooled at his feet with every passing minute.

There was nothing to do for Lincoln _but_ smoke and walk in circles.

It was half past five, on the same Halloween night that had been to Lincoln like a never-ending roller coaster ride ( _going down and down and down_ ). Two hours and a half before Sara met with Bagwell and his advisor in Paul Kellerman's office, and only a short while after she had dismissed him, having watched the video that gave the cell phone in his jean pocket such a detestable weight.

Whatever plans they were currently deliberating, Lincoln had wasted no time to come up with his own.

"I can fix this," he whispered, under his breath. His voice didn't really fight off the ambient gloom but filled the blackness of night with mad prayers. "I can fix this I can fix this I can fix this."

In the pocket of his leather jacket, the origami rose lay safe and warm, like a baby kitten he'd rescued from drowning.

Two and a half cigarettes elapsed before Lincoln at last saw Roland's car, making its way toward him. Maybe he wasn't late by more than five minutes.

But on that night of Halloween, time had taken on a brand-new attire, so it, too, was dressed like death, and far graver than all the trick-or-treating children.

"Jesus, Burrows," Roland sighed on seeing his friend, after he'd parked and slammed the door of his car shut. "You look like –"

"Don't even tell me."

Lincoln walked up to his friend, and hoped the graveness on his face would be enough to replace preliminary talk about what sort of a situation he was in.

Though Lincoln hadn't seen Roland since before he was sent to Fox River, the young man hadn't changed an inch, from his hairless cheeks to the lank black strands that framed his black-eyed face.

"You know that favor you owe me," Lincoln said, and didn't bother to specify _which_ favor he was alluding to.

The latest one, he supposed, would be doing jail time rather than taking the cops' deal and giving them the name of his collaborators.

Roland's face didn't grow suddenly awkward – he hadn't driven all the way here, in the middle of the night, thinking Lincoln only wanted to catch up.

"Yeah."

Roland didn't exactly inspire the implacable confidence Lincoln favored in this sort of moment – when you've got a debt you pay it, you made a mistake, you _fix_ it – but no shyness or hesitance to indicate he was going to look for a way out of this.

It was enough.

"I need you to hack someone."

Relief was evident on Roland's face. "Man, you actually had me nervous for a second –"

"Senator Theodore Bagwell." Lincoln didn't pause long enough for the dumb shock to give way to words. "We don't have much time. We have _very_ little. What I need is for you to catch him saying something so bad it would disqualify him for president on the spot. Something that'd make our current president's pussy-speech scandal look trivial."

"Linc –"

"I don't know anyone who can handle machines like you do, Roland." Flattery was cheap, but it worked on the kid. Lincoln couldn't afford to waste any chances. "How many are there, in the country? A handful? Most of them are government recruits, so I can't very well go to them about this, can I? It's not a small favor. But it's smaller than what you owe."

"A Senator, Linc? I could go to jail. I could get killed, for Christ's sake."

"They won't trail it back to you. They _can't_. And if they catch me, you know I won't talk."

Roland considered this, for a while – not really what Lincoln was asking for, but every single other option he might have. Lincoln watched as they passed bleakly by his frantic eyes.

"Oh, fuck. _Fuck_."

"It needs to be bad." Lincoln said again. "Apart from that, I don't care _what_. The nastiest, the better."

Lincoln didn't have too clear an idea just what material Roland could get from behind his laptop, inside his tiny, roach-infested apartment, if he still lived in that shit hole where he'd invited Lincoln over for a beer some couple of years ago.

Could he access every single phone conversation Senator Bagwell had had this year? Sure, they told you there were no such records, but wasn't it just safer for you to think so, to think the words you spoke into your cell phone just disappeared into some black vacuum that would never be brought up by anyone again? _Could_ the camera eye on your laptop look at you, if someone was really trying for it – could they catch you wandering off to the shower naked, saying vile things as you can only say to an empty apartment, banging prostitutes, practicing a Nazi salute?

What did Lincoln know about Bagwell's life? The little bastard sure _looked_ like a man who has secrets. People who make it so far in a presidential race often do – secrets far worse than a hidden lover.

Lincoln forced the lid back on his guilt, thick black bubbles bursting closer and closer to the surface.

 _Later, if this doesn't work, there'll be nothing but time for self-pity_.

"If you got qualms about this, I'm sorry." Lincoln said. "I can't tell you why he deserves it. You'll just have to take my word for it that he does – and it's for a right cause."

That meant nothing to Roland, of course. Or next to nothing.

Right or wrong didn't always come into the balance.

But Lincoln wanted to put all the odds into his favor.

Or maybe he just wanted to hear himself say the words. _It's for a right cause_.

 _Redemption's a long, long way to crawl_.

"All right." Roland said. Again, he lacked in firmness but wasn't completely on the wobbly side either. "When do you need it? Before the election, I assume. Are we talking a couple of days –"

"I need it yesterday." Lincoln cut in. "Today will have to do."

Roland's Adam apple traveled up and down his throat like a small rock he'd tried to swallow. Still, he didn't protest or negotiate. "Okay."

"Call me when you've got anything. And –"

"I got it. The badder, the better."

Lincoln gave a grim nod.

When Roland had disappeared back into his car, for the sake of high spirits, he tested the words out loud again, "It's for a right cause."

…

The sky outside the window was full black as Michael made it back to his apartment, no hints of dawn. Though exhaustion was surely sawing at his brain ( _rusty, smiling pain_ ), Michael didn't rush to bed, didn't make hot coffee, didn't do anything that would break the bubble of nightmarish wonders that whirled about him.

A vague protest in the young man's chest, tightening in on itself, urged that he should wake up –

But Michael felt rather like in one of those dreams that take on truer, if blacker, colors than reality, and he was unsure whether his current state was a fading delusion, or if he had merely been asleep until now, all his life.

Those average but pleasant thirty years of life, work and charity and Lincoln and then Sara, Sara who undid every well-set plan, who had brought him to the edge of a steep precipice where a sea of terrors raged on below in apocalyptic battle ( _my world's a jungle, Michael_ ), Sara, whose very first smile as they met in that charity center had been like a revolution, and there had been nothing for Michael to do but bend the knee, surrender.

 _Yes, oh yes, darling, wife, queen_. _This man here is your conquered property, to take, to live in, to plunder, to do with as you wish_.

He had loved her before there were words in his mouth to say _hello_.

He had loved her before he could think to call it love, this blasting defeat, the hopelessness of all resistance.

Michael stood hesitant for a while, in the hall of his apartment. The everydayness of his surroundings disturbed his new unreal reality, where there was no Sara, no Lincoln – nothing but _plain old Michael_ , and those thorny thoughts that embrace the brain before sleep.

He walked in darkness to his living room, past the light switch, without taking off his coat or shoes. Night cloaked his apartment with unfamiliarity, the well-known objects vague outlines and figures. Finally, Michael sat, at ease in this uncanny environment, as if behind the skin, he, too, had been reduced to shapes and shadows.

"What's wrong with you?"

Michael didn't usually speak to himself, but tonight was different.

( _It's not every night your brother stabs you in the heart_ )

Reason hadn't completely deserted him. Michael tried to think, to follow logical courses of reflection – how to get out of this, what to do – but all he came back to, when he tried to untangle himself from those black cobwebs that clawed at him with all their might, the only thing that Michael's mind would rest on, was that first meeting with Sara, in the back of the center, that sudden silence that penetrated his heart, even as Charles and the others went on chatting undisturbed.

Maybe _that_ was the answer to his problem, strange as it sounds.

 _Why did I love her?_

Michael's fingernails sank hard into his thighs, through the fabric of his jeans.

All his life, he'd seen and been appalled at the injustice of the world –

 _Yes, but what can you do about that? Might as well protect your own, do good on the small scale rather than face those grinning Giants who own the world, and who'll crush your soul if they can't own it. Prefer shadow to the spotlight._

But then, Sara.

Sara who fought the monsters, who tore them apart with the universal truth of her words, who would win even if they beat her.

Was that what it had meant?

That his love for her had felt like immediate, irremediable conquest…

Had he loved her on sight and known at once that she could never love him back, because they had built their lives in different worlds?

 _I told her it was enough, for us to love each other in the shadows, to save the light for later_.

It wasn't enough, now, as Michael sat alone, sickened with every inch of himself.

 _But my brother ruined her, ruined us, and I sat there and did nothing, said nothing_.

Time passed. How much was indeterminable, except that it was still pitch-black outside the window.

Finally, without it looking like the action was prompted by anything particular, Michael got to his feet. Walking. _Pacing_. Not in aimless circles – no. His mind was teeming with the life of great designs that required careful preparation.

It didn't matter that Michael had studied not law but engineering, or that he had chosen to be a looker-on for most of his life, chosen contemplation to _action_.

Now was as good a time as any for a change of course.

Michael only knew that because he had sat, a helpless witness to the destruction of his own life and happiness – he would never be passive in the face of injustice again.

Then, as if the brewing influx of thoughts had suddenly become too much for the young man's brain, Michael threw himself on a pen and paper, bent over his desk, started writing it all down, until his project was a thick stack of ink-scrawled sheets.

He was not happy, or hopeful, but he had drawn up his weapons against despair – he was joining Sara's universe.

Whether she would like it or not never entered his brain.

It was the only thing he could do to live with himself – to live with what had happened.

Some great things may still follow that terrible event.

In his head, Michael saw Sara's smile again, that smile that had undone him – _Welcome to the jungle, my love. Welcome_.

It might have been the tiredness.

…

 **End Notes** : Please share your thoughts. Comments are welcome. I'd love to know your theories about what will happen.


	14. The Scarlet Letter

"You should get a couple of hours," Paul suggested, which wasn't unlike him at all.

Sara knew if a sudden apocalypse struck the world with living dead or some more original scourge, Paul Kellerman would be among the survivors, because he had based his whole life on preparing himself to survive unimaginable situations – he'd be the sort who forced himself to get half an hour of sleep every six hours instead of those who keep on going until their bodies collapse, the sort who'd eat half an inch of bread for breakfast and an equally small portion for dinner, because he knew just what amount of food he needed to keep himself functioning.

 _It's a good thing he's on my side_ , she thought, not for the first time.

In the case of an unforeseen disaster, Sara would probably come knocking on his door ( _pointless; he'd know how to find her_ ).

"Sleep?" Sara shrugged. "After a night like I've had?"

"It's important to keep your mind sharp."

"Well, I'm not like you, Paul. Can't just turn myself off when I need it. I'll sleep when this is over."

He didn't prod her any further.

She and Kellerman were still at his office, had been going over the interview with Abruzzi and Bagwell for the past few hours. Kellerman had phoned his assistant and asked for coffee refills and a couple of bagels from a small bakery not discouragingly far from his building.

"You do know there's a Starbuck right next door?" She said.

"Big corporations are evil."

That got her laughing for a full-blown minute – exhaustion made it harder to keep herself in check, and it was better she should laugh, in such times as this.

Sara made no comment as Paul's assistant delivered the errand. She was a young, pretty thing, with a blonde ponytail and appropriate knee-skirt, you'd think she was trying to embrace the stereotype.

 _Probably not much younger than me_ , Sara thought. Smiled at the girl to signify hello, thank you and goodbye at once.

"Do you think that's the reason why all this happened?" She asked. Met Kellerman's brown-blue earnest eyes. "That people like Senator Bagwell and John Abruzzi are just too used to women like me being their assistant, that they can't stand losing to someone who looks like the person that brings their morning coffee?"

"If you'd been a man, they would have tried to tear you apart all the same. No quarter. All that matters is you're standing between them and power."

"It's not _all_ that matters."

Paul gave no answer. They ate breakfast in silence. The bagels were greasy with fat, tasted overly rich; she could feel it going down like a tight lump in her stomach.

 _At Starbuck_ , Sara thought of saying, _you can get fruit salads and_ _French toast_.

But she didn't.

Big corporations were evil.

"We can work on this all day," Kellerman said. "There're a couple appointments too important for me to cancel. I can clear the rest of the day."

"Thank you."

When Sara looked up from her bagel, she saw Kellerman was looking strangely at her. _Don't thank him for doing something that's as natural to him as breathing_. Still, it mattered to her, that she still saw what he did for her as services he was under no obligation to give her, even if he didn't.

"I'd rather ask you this after you've slept, but if you say your head is clear, I trust you. Just so you know… I can deal with this however you wish me to." Then he said the thing Sara knew was inevitable. "There _are_ other spheres in your life to consider. If you say we take the deal, I'll write you the most convincing story you've ever read about sudden illness making you indisposed for four years. Hell. I can write you into a kidnapping story and make you an American hero before you can snap your fingers, and you'll be sipping martinis in a sunny island for the whole of Bagwell's term. There'll be time to fix his mistakes later."

"No point." She said. "No deal. I'm sure about this. If Bagwell runs the video, I'll handle it as I've handled everything in my campaign – with directness and honesty. I can look at the people in the face and tell them I have a sex life that's unfortunately become public. If they won't elect me because of it, so be it – but that's on them, not me. What I can't do is lie to them so I'll fit more perfectly in the box of great world leaders. The rules haven't changed, Paul. And I'll play the game until I'm buried."

Kellerman put down his bagel, like such speeches required solemnity.

He didn't need to say he'd follow her to the world's end.

"So," he said, "we work on how we'll take this. Your response to the video – your accusation on Bagwell."

"They're going to be back here again tomorrow morning. Maybe if we've got enough to show them what a bad idea this is, they'll back down."

Kellerman didn't nod at this, and Sara wasn't expecting confirmation.

Both of them knew when people have gotten this far into the game, no degree of dirty-playing is out of the table.

They'd see it through to the end.

One way or another.

…

Around lunch time, during which neither she or Kellerman thought of pausing for food, Sara excused herself to the bathroom for a few minutes and, trying not to feel like a sneaky teenager, she dialed Michael's number.

Huddled in one of the cabins, with her fist pressed to her forehead, her other hand holding the phone to her ear. No amount of reasoning would quiet her hammering-heart, beating against her ribcage.

Sara reached voicemail and dialed again. _Please leave a message after the –_

"Damn it," she sighed.

However hard it was for her to take a step of distance from this whole thing, Sara could see, very soon, it would strike her, how damaging for Michael this had to be.

 _His brother_.

The very brother he'd painted to her as an incredibly kind-hearted man who'd made one bad choice after the other, the brother she'd understood had been the center of his life for so long –

Some people live a whole life without witnessing such devotion.

And of course, Michael didn't do things _halfway_. The love he'd shown her was so unconditional and absolute, the greatest, most complete thing Sara had ever known.

Michael made love look easy, like some people do religion. Something that at once takes possession of you without it being of any use to struggle.

 _If he's lost Lincoln, he needs to know he has me. That he won't lose me_.

 _Jesus, and I left that motel in such a hurry_ –

 _How selfish. Worrying about my career. Where is he what is he doing?_

 _Please let him be at work with his phone turned off, or so sound asleep he can't hear the ring –_

The thoughts struck not one after the other but all at once, until Sara needed to shut all of them out. She tried Michael's phone one last time and didn't leave a message, not even just _call me back_. Messages were unsafe.

When she returned to Paul's office, he didn't comment on her short absence, and she knew no crack in her face betrayed concern or disappointment. But there was a shift in the air, an ungraspable hint of unspoken-ness in their silence, and she knew he'd picked up something about her below-surface disturbances.

 _He isn't through_ _with this_ , caution reminded Sara. _Don't you fool yourself_. Paul was by rule the least pleased person about any harm coming to her political career, and that secret boyfriend of hers had been a nasty pill to swallow.

 _He's not swallowed it yet_.

Bad surprises might still come out of this.

"While we're talking," he said. She knew, from the tone he used, that he was going to broach the subject. "When you consider making the video public, you don't think that's something you should discuss with someone else."

Sara took this with composure but directness – meeting Kellerman's gaze. "You know as well as I do the video's not enough to identify him. Maybe if you knew him really _well_ ," only as well as she or Lincoln knew him, "and of course, there'll be some buzzing about it – people will look for resemblances with celebrities, he'll be a famous actor or rock singer or one of my main opponents. The more scandalous, the better. But he'll remain unidentified," as always, her man of shadows, her lover-in-the-dark. "Let's not pretend you haven't tried looking for him."

"And a bad job of it, too." He answered. "But I've watched the video once, in your company, without screening through every person that's ever been in contact with you. If Bagwell goes through with this, people are going to get the chance to watch it again and again, until they find him."

 _Ah. Clever_.

She could see what he was doing there.

There was no risk of Michael's identity being discovered, she knew. But if he made her think there was, if he made it look like he could help her protect him, like he was on her side –

But he would never be on her side about this.

If he knew who Michael was, if he even had suspects in mind, he'd take them down one by one – Sara's mind didn't shy away from devising in what way he would do that. Blackmail. Threat. Coercion.

They both knew there were no lengths he wouldn't go to.

"I won't tell you who he is, Paul." She said.

There was no reason this shouldn't be simple.

"I didn't ask."

"And now, you won't have to."

Though they said no more about this, and Kellerman proved as efficient as ever in establishing a counterattack plan, Sara could feel this wasn't over ( _the pill hasn't been swallowed_ ) and knew she should be careful about it coming back to blow up in her face.

It was a little over eleven p.m. when they decided to call it a night.

She'd been so vehement in preparing a solid response to her upcoming disgrace, Sara could almost swear all of it had already happened – the paparazzi firing questions at her, hisses from the crowd, Bagwell's feignedly shocked speech on television. It _had_ happened, in some lesser reality, in the myriad extrapolations Sara's own mind created for her to watch unfold.

All the while, part of her was still focused on getting only Michael's voicemail –

 _Please let him be all right, please don't let him hate me for this_.

"You know, I actually think we can pull this off," Kellerman told her. Sara met his gaze with ready alertness. "Pitting you against a crowd of evil puritans. If someone can sport a scarlet letter and come out all the more glorious for it, it's only right it should be you – I can't think of anyone else."

Whether tiredness had made him blunter than usual, Sara couldn't say. For the sake of knowing what he'd say next if she urged him, Sara arched a brow.

"Oh, I don't mean because I associate with sexual scandal in general –"

It was rare enough he should get so tangled in his speech. Sara smiled, failing not to enjoy this.

"You know, how when it's time for a radical change, people need to gather around a figure, someone who'll embody a transition between the old order and the new."

"Jesus, Paul."

"Well, not _Jesus_ exactly."

"I expected you'd handle the lack of sleep more impassively."

He smiled, too, at her teasing. "And I'd expect you were better at taking compliments."

"Oh, was that what you were going for?"

"I don't have to say I believe in you." Now, he sounded a little irritated – this was getting a little sentimental to his liking. "And before you, I had no strong opinion about any sort of real change that this country's politics needed. There are surprisingly few presidents who've actually changed the way things were done in this country, Sara – Abraham Lincoln, FDR. I'm inclined to think the social system in America will remember you forever."

Sara shrugged with humility. "Not every president had a sex tape going viral on the net."

There was no time for further banter before Sara's cell phone started ringing – graveness returned to her face as fast as it had left.

 _Michael_.

Her own pulse was deafening at her temples. Before she could help it, she'd reached for the phone inside her jacket and unclasped it in one motion, pressing it to her ear under Kellerman's watchful gaze.

"Hello?"

Hope was still raging in her breast when a deep voice answered at the other end of the line, "It's Lincoln."

…

 **End Notes** : Let me know your thoughts as always. The title is an obvious reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_.


	15. On Different Paths

**AN** : Special warning, the word "nigger" will be used in that chapter, as well as homophobic slurs. I guess there's not too much suspense as regards which character will be using that language, and I felt queasy just having to write it down so I prefer to give you a heads up. It serves its purpose so I couldn't take it out of the story either. That's all I needed to say. Enjoy your chapter :-).

…

When Michael got home, that first of November, which seemed but a cruel prolongation of an endless Halloween night, he was surprised to find his brother Lincoln, waiting for him in the living room –

Except _surprised_ wasn't the right word for it.

"I thought I'd made myself clear."

Though Michael's voice was certainly earnest, it was free from the earlier frustration he'd experienced, in the motel room.

Fate was no longer crumbling out of his hands as he tried to grasp it. Rather, Michael felt cool, the soothing mechanisms of his inner reflections steeling his confidence.

Yes, certainly. Things were going to change. Things had _begun_ changing.

It was a little over seven p.m.

As he hung his coat on the rack, in the hall, Michael felt deep in the recesses of his body how he would have enjoyed this – Lincoln coming back here despite his clearly-stated wishes. Anything that would begin to even out the huge disadvantage that had settled between the brothers, the unmitigated weakness Lincoln had plunged him in, head first (what cold, shadowy waters these were).

But now, there was nothing like satisfaction in Michael's breast – the icy coldness that had permeated his whole frame last night hadn't thawed, although the birth of a specific purpose had made it more tolerable.

"I came here to talk," Lincoln said.

"What is talk going to solve?" Michael stepped further inside the living room but didn't sit down. "How will it make any difference?"

He walked past his brother and into the kitchen, as if Lincoln had been a piece of furniture. On his counter, the coffee machine hummed to life as Michael switched it on – Linc had teased him about this. _You know this is theft, right? Charging you – what? – one dollar fifty, two dollars for a cup of coffee you make in your own home? My dear Michael,_ Lincoln had sighed, like his brother had fallen prey to the evil of capitalism and western society at large.

Of course.

If crime hadn't been a way for Lincoln to live outside the box, to evade some of the wrongs the very structure of government condones, he would have been a lawful man in the first place. On your own, without anyone to push you in narrow path of normalcy, what are the odds you'll do greater wrong than the average Joe? That everyman who walks by hungry people in the street without blinking, who makes a fifth more money than his girlfriend, who finds employment when his darker-skinned neighbors don't – but what can you do?

 _What_ can _you do?_ Michael thought again, and reflected that his brother had probably asked himself that same question. Only, over the years, the both of them had come to radically different answers.

"Coffee?" Michael offered. "For the road, I mean. If you're driving."

"Mike –"

"I don't think I'd like to talk to you right now, Linc. Not for some time – you understand that, don't you?"

Michael sipped the foam that had gathered at the brim of his cup. The hot, bitter liquid revived his stomach to life – the thought of food or drink had made him queasy all day.

"How much time's appropriate, do you think for what happened?"

Laughter rose to Michael's lips, surprising both the young man and his brother. Somehow, the laughter was genuine, amusement but with roots so deep into the newborn coldness of his heart, Lincoln felt his brother's pain, and could not take it with full impassiveness, like he would have done his own.

"I remember when you were seventeen, and I walked into your bedroom without knocking –" Michael shook his head. "I wanted to show you my new science project I'd just finished – it was huge, so I just didn't have any _hands_ to knock. Remember?"

Lincoln didn't nod, but a sore softness in his eyes answered he did.

"'Course, I didn't know Veronica was in your room, that you'd been helping her sneak in there however often you could for the past weeks."

It was the first time Michael had seen a naked girl and, for that matter, the first time he saw his brother naked since his toddler years.

The unapologetic _crack_ as his science project collapsed on the ground replaced any sound Michael may have chosen to vocalize his burning embarrassment.

"How long," Michael said, "after that moment, until I could bare to look you in the eye? I think at least a few weeks. Can't you even give me that, Linc?"

"I have a solution."

Michael drank his coffee, unimpressed.

There was no difficulty in holding his brother's gaze.

"I called a friend of mine."

"Heaven."

The hot coffee gliding down Michael's throat was less bitter than the irony.

"Someone who can go just about wherever from the screen of his laptop. He's agreed to go after Bagwell –"

"Yes, by all means. More scandals. More tricks."

Michael laughed.

That country he lived in was enough to drive one berserk. Like at a parade, the spectators _knew_ they had no impact on the action – the vote, yes, _democracy_ , but can anyone pull out of their hats a clear explanation for what it really means? – but they came and shouted their approval or their rebuke, and that was enough, for most. All of the strings-pulling and decision-making took place backstage – not in the spotlight, not on live television, but in the shadows. Really… Where Michael had been most comfortable all his life.

"He'll find something, Mike. Something we can use to fight back, to stop them from ever airing that video –"

"Sara's decided on that yet, has she? You've seen her?" Michael asked with a new voice – it wasn't cold, but it wasn't exactly his own, and he couldn't connect with it, couldn't feel whatever emotions it triggered. "Right," he said. "She would have wanted to see _you_. You're a part of this, her world, though you're on the wrong side of it."

Although Sara had tried calling him today, Michael hadn't wanted to pick up. When he spoke to her, it should be with his own voice, or at least one he could understand. She mattered too much for him to allow her to glimpse the ruling chaos in his brain.

"I know it won't take back what I've done."

"No," Michael agreed.

Drained what was left of his coffee, then shifted on his feet to carry the cup to the sink –

A rubbery _squish_ accompanied Michael's footsteps, which drew Lincoln's attention to the state of his brother's shoes. The weather had been bad that day, all rain and few intermissions. Lincoln himself had gotten soaking wet in the few minutes it'd taken him to go from the underground station to his brother's apartment.

But Michael's shoes, ordinarily black, had turned a faded in between of brown and grey, like he'd been out in the rain all day.

Without another word, Lincoln shoved his hand into his pocket and took out the key to his brother's apartment, which he lay on the coffee table.

Michael didn't acknowledge this with a nod or a word of approval.

In his pocket, Lincoln's fingers brushed against the origami flower he'd picked up in the motel room. He could have left it beside the key, but right now, in the state his brother was in, Lincoln didn't think it safe, feared the flower might end up in the trash.

That was the word for Michael, really.

He seemed in a great _spring-cleaning_ mood. Like he was in the midst of a mental clear-out.

Lincoln headed towards the door, but glanced again at his brother's face, then at his ruined shoes. Last night, he had lost all claims to brotherly worry, but that didn't stop him from feeling it – indeed. Lincoln was worried.

"How was work?" He ventured to ask.

Michael answered immediately, without any audible emotion. "I quit."

…

Some five hours later, when Lincoln found himself in Paul Kellerman's office, for the second time in twenty-four hours, that interview with his brother still hovered like a black cloud in the back of his brain. He didn't take Roland with him – he had promised him absolute secrecy – but carried the USB stick which the kid had given him when they'd met up, around eleven p.m.

"You'll see," Roland had said, "it's good."

There was effort to convince in his tone, enough to make Lincoln cautious. They played the recording a first time in complete silence. All the while, beads of sweat were rolling down Roland's face, so Lincoln had to attribute this nervousness to a fear of his own reaction –

 _Does the kid think I'll bash his head in if what he's found isn't good enough?_

Lincoln had never so much as raised his voice on the kid in his life. But he had that effect on people – the effect most tall, bulky, untalkative men have, he assumed.

There was no need for any browbeating, anyway.

The recording _was_ good.

Lincoln listened to it a couple more times, and even gave Roland his best shot at a smile, so he'd relax.

"Thank you," he'd said, when he took the flash drive out of Roland's computer and put it in the inner pocket of his jacket.

"Now we're even," Roland answered, like he worried Lincoln might take it back.

"Sure. We're even."

There was no such hope of complete absolution as Lincoln played the recording for Sara and Kellerman, that same evening, nearing midnight.

The both of them sat in silence, while Lincoln stood (he'd politely declined the seat they'd offered), hands behind his back, trying to carry himself with more confidence than Roland had, when their positions were reversed.

But though it was the fourth time Lincoln listened to that unpalatable recording, he felt no awkwardness – there was no need for him to fake it.

In truth, just watching the two politicians' faces as they discovered the audio was a show to itself. Lincoln watched Sara especially. Maybe that was wrong, after all that had happened – maybe he should be staring at his own damned feet, like Michael had when Lincoln had finally introduced Veronica to him properly.

But there was no helping it.

He was tired. They were all tired.

And Sara's cool, collected reaction captured his attention, like a snap of the fingers. He saw immediately, how she stood apart from her kind – oh, they told you not to put people into boxes, but most obeyed the invisible commands of their social group, learned to walk in ranks like sheep in daylight and, when there were fewer witnesses around, they'd howl with the wolves and tear a piece of flesh off the singled out victim who'd strayed from their proper place.

 _Just the way of the world_ , Lincoln had always thought, with cynicism. _The law of the jungle_.

But Sara's face alone belied that statement.

True, you couldn't see a lot of what was going on, emotion-wise, but what you _did_ see was real.

The recording was eight minutes long and consisted of a phone conversation – more of a monologue, if you were going to be picky – between Bagwell and some unidentified individual, whose identity made little difference anyhow.

Sara's reaction as she listened was a strikingly honest – and surprisingly charming – brand of disillusioned amusement. She arched her brows at the words "fruitcake" and "faggot", took a sharp intake of air that she didn't let out for a full minute – the sigh had to come out, when the well-known, unmistakable voice of the charismatic southerner suggested a wall was _too damned soft_. "They should shoot the bloody parasites where they stand."

Kellerman made no comment, but Lincoln could see the satisfaction gleaming in his eyes – and he felt, right away, they were _dangerous_ eyes.

In Sara, the protest was tame, maintained calmly below surface, but it was there, as sure as he was breathing.

 _She's at war_ , Lincoln realized, _has been at war all her life_. Against men like Bagwell, men like her father no doubt – the kind of men that had made Lincoln lose faith in the system in the first place.

No wonder Michael had been seduced. There was enough in just half of that woman to fall in love right where you stood.

Guilt squeezed at his heart in an iron hand.

 _Later_ , he thought. _Later_.

"Jesus," Kellerman broke out, in the last thirty seconds of the record.

The infamous, crucial seconds during which Bagwell used the word "nigger", not once but twice, as he alluded to the country's last president.

Lincoln willed his eyes away from Sara for a moment to look at Kellerman – and discovered, to his dismay, that he was smiling like a shark.

Kellerman didn't wait a second until after the recording had turned silent to say, "We've got him. He's done."

"Paul –"

"America's prudish about nudity, she is, but she won't – _can't_ – vote for a candidate who uses the N-word. Abruzzi will fall in line if Bagwell won't. If this record comes out, he's finished. They'll have to cut a deal with us."

Sara's gaze wandered toward Lincoln, and the latter felt a surprising rush of weakness in his own legs – strong, steady legs that had never failed him before.

But those eyes were a fine juror.

Sharp, not forgiving yet not bitter – prudent.

Lincoln imagined his face turn livid as she scrutinized him – _enemy or ally, enemy or ally_ – and was surprised to see how his pulse quickened with a desire for her to accept him, to grasp the full extent of his devotion.

Because he had _wronged_ that woman, as much as his brother, and the rest of his life would be of no use if he could not make it up to them both.

"It certainly looks like it," she agreed, though without apparent mirth. Her eyes were still fixed on Lincoln, which Kellerman seemed to notice, despite the distracted rush of anticipated victory that had swum to his brain. "Paul, I'm going to leave this with you, all right? You can make as many copies as you want. In the meantime, I'm going to do as you've been suggesting all day – get a few hours of sleep."

"Well, sleep was sensible _before_ , when there had been no new developments –"

"The meeting's at eight, Paul. You and I can rendezvous here at five, there'll be more than enough time to come up with a deal that suits everyone."

Protest threatened to burst out of his lips, but he held it in – didn't want to be like a pleading schoolboy whining pointless ' _But's_ at her.

"You get all the sleep you need," he said. "If you'll wait just a few minutes, I'll call you a cab –"

"No need. My car's parked a couple of blocks from here – some walk will be much welcome, I should think. Lincoln," surprise stabbed into both men's chests, sudden and swift, at her calm suggestion, "I'd like you to walk with me."

She'd spoken his name, not with familiarity or any impassioned outburst – anger or otherwise – yet Lincoln watched as Kellerman's eyes flared with suspicious attention, could almost see the thoughts fusing in his brain.

 _Though he brought the video himself, and he's been in between friend and enemy, is_ he _the man from the motel room? Is he the secret lover?_

Heat rose to Lincoln's face at the explicitness of Kellerman's inner interrogations. It'd been a long time since he'd been caught blushing.

"As you say." He answered hoarsely.

"Sara, I don't think –"

"Thank you, Paul, I don't need your thoughts on this."

She slipped out the door after a final goodbye, and a smile that was neither a thank you for the day's work or an attempt to placate him, but that seemed the natural closure to their exchanges, whether on the side of business or friendship, if ever the two spheres reached full autonomy.

Lincoln wasn't sure what he expected Sara had asked him to walk her to her car for, but the easy, night-clad silence that set between them as soon as they exited the building, sure wasn't it.

Not even a hint as to what she might want him for.

The sound of her high heels on the flagstones, dry, bearing no evidence of the heavy rain that had flooded the streets of Chicago the day before.

He walked exactly beside her, not ahead or backwards, for fear either should be granted excessive interpretation.

At some point, when Sara's car came into view, he dared a first try, "Whatever you want to know –"

"Not here." She unlocked the doors, then opened the passenger door near the driver's seat – held it open, while looking at him expectantly. "Get in."

 _Oh, Jesus_.

He did as he was told without objection. Indebted to her as he was, she might have asked him to jump into the maws of hellfire. Lincoln believed in paying what he owed.

The shuffling in of legs and closing of car doors swept by in the flash of a second, then they both sat, and the heavy straitjacket of silence about Lincoln was so efficient, he was impressed with how easily Sara cast it off.

"What happened with Michael?"

Now, she _could_ ask. If not give full range to the concerns that had spun wild loops in her mind for the past twenty-four hours, at least acknowledge their existence, shape them into an easy question, that still didn't show too much weakness.

Still, Lincoln felt flattered, in a way – not flattered exactly, but like a warm balm around the desperate blackness of his conscience – that she would ask _him_. There was no one else she _could_ ask, but it was still a mild show of tolerance if not trust, that she would deliberately endure his presence for a few extra minutes, for any motive in the world.

"After I left, that night, did you –"

"We didn't fight." He said, was happy to watch the soothing ease in her eyes, then spread to her whole posture – her shoulders dropped half an inch, and there was something about the breath of air she drew in, like it was a new kind of oxygen than the one she'd been living on for the past day and night.

Finally, to have answers about this, to not have a huge pit of blackness open up in her mind when she thought ( _Michael_ ), the great, fearful pit of the unknown.

Her relief made sense to Lincoln.

 _She_ couldn't go to his apartment and check on him, as Lincoln had done, going against his brother's wishes. Though she was the woman he loved, she had far less freedom to go to him than Lincoln did – and now, it wasn't only a matter of preserving her public persona, the pride of getting elected not only as a woman, but an _odd_ woman. Now, she had to worry about his safety. Because that video had happened (because Lincoln had _made_ it happen) to risk revealing their relationship would be risking to expose him to the same scandal as she would face, if Bagwell refused to cut a deal.

 _He'll take the deal_ , Lincoln thought, _he'll be reasonable, if I have to knock out a few of his teeth_.

He'd show him to be reasonable around the people he cared about.

"Was he all right when he left there?"

"Not all right." It didn't occur to Lincoln to lie. "I saw him again, this evening. He was – different."

"How?"

"I couldn't say. He quit his job," he added, a concrete piece of information at least worth better than his interpretations.

Sara took it in, the quiet line of her clenched jaw like the carving of a statue's face.

A sharp, sudden wave of gratefulness shot through Lincoln's chest, at the idea that this great woman cared for his little brother.

"I can't go to him," she said. "He won't answer my calls."

"He'll be all right. I know." The look she gave him was explicit enough, spared her from asking a formal question. "I said he was different, and part of it was bad – was however he managed to process what I did to him, to you." He said this with a tone that didn't call for pathos or sympathy; and in a remote way, Sara admired him. "But part of it, I could recognize. He was driven."

"Driven how?"

Lincoln answered as concretely as he could. "Like the day he got home from school and shot straight to his bedroom, after some teacher did a nasty thing in class – if I remember right, one of Michael's friends had gotten an F on a short story assignment for impropriety, a nice kid whose open homosexuality shocked that particular teacher in real life as well as in writing." Lincoln cut to the chase, to show her he wasn't trying to be clever – that there was point here. "Michael didn't come out of his bedroom for seven hours, not for food, nothing, and he wouldn't open his door. When he did let me in, it was to show me the pamphlet he intended to print by the hundred and hang on every wall at school."

That pamphlet had been a passionate defense of tolerance, and an attack on bigotry rather than on Professor Maynard himself – Michael was always better at raising a sword on abstract words than on full-fledged individuals. Was better at defending than attacking, anyhow.

"A little colder, and a little older," Lincoln said, "that's what Michael looked like."

Sara swallowed. "All right."

Silence was back, smoothening in and fitting them like a glove, yet she didn't ask him to leave. Now, he sensed, they were going to leave Michael off the table – there was no need for her to linger on her concerns or seek reassurance. She didn't strike him as the kind of person who gets quieted by the sound of her own voice – and even if she were, he would probably be last on her list of listeners.

"Where do you fit, now, Lincoln?"

He appreciated her forwardness, wanted to show her he could follow her there, but she left him little time for an answer.

"You're not going to do me or my career any harm deliberately, I don't think."

"No."

"But that doesn't mean you can't cause trouble, even if you don't mean to."

"No more underground jobs. I'm done with that. Abruzzi knows it. We made a deal that this was the end of it and he'll be true to his word. He has no reason to screw me over, unless you want to tell him I brought you the recording of Bagwell's phone –"

"Of course not. That'd be strategically clumsy of me, for starters. And Abruzzi would have you killed, which I want no part of. I just want to know what to expect with you."

"You won't have to worry about me, Governor."

"I believe you mean that."

Though there was much of Lincoln that still eluded her – anything could be hiding behind that layer of matter-of-factness – Sara found it likely that he was loyal to those he cared about. Not because he was Michael's brother. You couldn't find a person who was more skeptical than Sara Tancredi when it came to hereditariness. But because he'd gone out of his ways to try and undo what he had done to her and his brother yesterday night. Because Sara was usually a good judge of character, and she found she wanted to trust the cool, simple promise in his eyes.

Forgiveness had nothing to do with it, didn't even cross her mind, or his, she suspected.

The consequences of his violation might be averted, but the act itself would not.

He would always be the man who had crouched in the dirt and filmed her while she was making love. But maybe he could still be other things.

Lincoln didn't apologize again. Once had been necessary, but the apology in itself was an insult, when the wrong done is so far beyond forgiveness.

"I think," Lincoln said, "in the next eight years, you'll find me a most patriotic American. No trouble." He didn't give her his word, as she had no cause to value it. "If there's ever anything you can use me for, I'll be utterly at your service."

Sara took his words in, took them like an expert sipping wine and trying to detect poison.

"We didn't exactly get an ideal start as in-laws, did we."

He was surprised at where she took this – the sudden, unashamed turn to their personal situation. Out loud, he had acknowledged her only as Governor of Illinois – not his brother's lover.

Unsure what to say except, ultimately, "I won't be trouble in that sphere, either. You won't have to see me again."

"Your brother loves you. And I love your brother."

Words turned to crumbly sand in Lincoln's mouth when he tried to answer.

"Do you need me to drop you off somewhere?"

"Thank you," he declined. "I'll go back the way I came."

He stepped out of the car without waiting for further encouragement, and watched as the vehicle disappeared in the city lights, flashing him by like a dream.

Lincoln stood there, for a moment, dazed by the last day's events. What Sara had said played over in his mind, with a degree of hope if not outright optimism.

 _Your brother loves you. And I love your brother_.

Maybe, after enough time, that would be all that mattered.

…

 **End Notes** : Pretty please let me know what you think ;) I had such a delightful time with this.


	16. Cold Is The Journey

Senator Bagwell, of course, was not gracious about it. Sara had hardly expected him to be the kind to lose with dignity.

 _If we were two boxers fighting on the ring, he'd bite my ankles and send vicious kicks into my kneecaps even after he was on the ground, rather than admit defeat._

"This is preposterous," his voice stiff and shrill with practiced notes of outrage. "Simply preposterous."

Though Bagwell had agreed to sit down with his associate at the beginning of the interview – by then, he'd been Cheshire-grinning and casting Sara looks full of superior glee – the sound of his own voice, which managed to be offensive to women, blacks and immigrants in a record time of eight minutes, caused him to stand up, like a prude maiden attacked in her modesty. They played the recording just once – once was enough. Maybe it wasn't the shortest time it's ever taken a candidate to ruin their chances at the presidency – these things can happen fast; the wrong thing said on TV; the wrong choice of clothes or makeup at a public event.

Little things.

Not like the massive artillery she and Bagwell had been threatening each other with the past two nights.

"Preposterous," Bagwell repeated.

He'd first made for the door, maybe under the impression that if he succeeded in convincing them that he was shocked, things would work all right for him – but at Abruzzi's beckoning of the finger, he'd simply started pacing the room.

"Instead of using big words," said Paul, "why don't we all sit down and try to have an adult conversation?"

"Your recording's a fake," Bagwell interjected. "A practical joke –"

"Yes, yes," Kellerman said, with a tolerant smile. "So is yours."

"Now –"

"No, the gentleman is right," Abruzzi said – although it was Sara alone he was looking at. "Let's get down to business."

A while of silence, throughout which Sara held Abruzzi's gaze – maybe he would see exhaustion, caused by the lack of sleep but especially by the incessant power play of politics.

Sometimes, she envied Michael, who was content with fighting the good fight on a small scale, charity work, and being good to even complete strangers – the mere thought of such a lifestyle had become nearly dreamlike to her, so young had she determined herself for a different path.

Silence among politicians was never _just_ silence. Every move of your body – crossing your legs, self-soothing motions such as rubbing your thumb over your index – _everything_ you did, your opponents could brandish and use against you. _See how her weakness shows? Oh, she's not ready for this. Not ready at all._

To make it in this world, you had to convince everyone in the room you were more than human –

And most crucially, more than woman.

But Sara was playing that same game on different rules.

Let Abruzzi see she was tired, so long as he also saw her overwhelming resilience – she would not quit, would not cower under their threats, even under their blows. She was of the 'break sooner than bend' material.

Ultimately, Bagwell returned to his seat; the fidgetiness of his movements indicated to Sara he was still desperate to exonerate himself of having made such politically incorrect statements. She thought it wise to pull the idea out of his head right away.

"It'll do you no more good to accuse me of libel than it would for me to charge you with voyeurism, Senator. It's not about whether either of us is innocent," Sara couldn't help but smile ( _the foolishness of such a word out there in the jungle_ ), "it's about what we have on each other, and how we're going to go about it. Well?"

"The election's in a week," Paul said. "I think the question we should really be asking ourselves, here, is do we really want to go down in history as the presidential election that disgraced America – you thought the last one was bad?" He shrugged. "That's peanuts compared to what we got. Just last week, the presenter for some baking competition show was fired for admitting he'd used the N-word a couple of decades ago. And we're not dealing exactly with 'locker-room chitchat', are we? This is serious talk. If we air this, your candidate stands to lose a lot more than the election. He could go to jail for this."

"I've heard you aren't popular among the Fox River population," Sara said.

"Oh, that's just –"

"No, no," Abruzzi interrupted again.

On the surface of the desk, his fingers were drawing uncertain shapes, like he felt right at home – which was fine with her. Sara liked those hands better on the desk where she could see them than below it.

"This is negotiation, isn't it?" He said. "Let's just start talking about what our terms are, respectively. And quite frankly, I don't think you have the advantage here." He shrugged. "You have a voice. We have tits."

Sara was unimpressed, "Tits that haven't made themselves guilty of racism and misogyny."

"We both know," Kellerman said, "that Senator Bagwell's voice is as identifiable, if not more, than Governor Tancredi is in your video."

"It's a good voice," Sara agreed. "You _ran_ on it, Senator. Every American who's heard so much as one word from you could identify it beyond doubt."

A moment of silence. Abruzzi's thumb rubbed against the mahogany desk. Bagwell's eyes looked like they might be about to strike her like snakes, the disdain in them was so blatant. For a second, Sara almost hoped he would jump over that desk and strangle her right here and there, so they could put a definite end to this.

 _He wants it_ , she thought. Could see how much the effort to stop himself cost him.

In the space of a few seconds – the time the silence endured – Sara realized Theodore Bagwell would be willing to do absolutely anything to win the presidency of the United States.

 _He'd kill me in a heartbeat. And he'd like it_.

A flush of nausea stabbed through Sara's chest.

Oh, if she'd chosen the same path as Michael's, she would never have to stand the sight of such people. Someone else could always fight the good fight – right now, she couldn't remember exactly when she'd decided there was just no other path for her.

 _One day, when this is all over, we'll buy a house somewhere in Panama and leave everything of this life behind_.

"Our terms are simple," Sara said, when she sensed it was time – when the two men opposite her had weighed the consequences implied if they were to make this recording public. "You hold on to what you have, and we hold on to ours. The election goes down as it's meant to and we let the result be decided by the popular vote."

Abruzzi chuckled. Sara didn't interpret it as defeat.

"That would suit you well, darling."

"Hey –"

"Oh, don't," Abruzzi sighed at Kellerman's interjection, "I call everybody darling."

"Aren't we a little old for name-calling?" Sara said. "Because I have a perfect set in mind for each of you. How about we skip that, and you just give me a straight answer."

"One week," Kellerman repeated. "Do you have an idea what would happen, if both candidates were disqualified at this point? We could all kiss our careers goodbye, by mere association with the scandal. You should consider yourselves lucky we'd allow Senator Bagwell to stick around in politics, after something like this."

Sara brushed Paul's elbow under the table.

In this world, every means of communication should be employed –

 _Careful_ , she meant to tell him. Bagwell might not look much like anything now, she could sense, in her gut, he was the wrong man to humiliate.

Though Paul gave no visible reaction, she sensed in the silence that followed that he'd gotten it.

"It'd do you good to consider we have this country's good name to think about," Sara said. "After all, do you want to be responsible for the crumbling of our reputation abroad? Have we or haven't we been calling ourselves the leaders of the free world – and do we really want to be responsible for our own national disgrace? As the Republican and Democrat candidates chosen by our parties, we each embody the way people see the United States – and I can live with my own truth, Senator Bagwell, I can. Your video is no shame of mine. Could you say the same of yours?"

Bagwell kept silent. When he opened his mouth, she half expected he was going to breathe fire, like one of Hawthorne's devils. "You _tricked_ me. Before there's talk of any deal, I want to know who you hired for your phony recording. I want _someone_ to pay for this."

"Come, come," Abruzzi said. "That'd entitle them to ask me for _my_ handy man, and I've promised him a decent retirement."

Sara bit on her smile, stifled all traces of amusement before the two men opposite her could spot it.

She doubted Abruzzi would ever guess he and Bagwell were talking about one and the same man.

"I don't care _what_ you promised –"

"You know?" Abruzzi interrupted. "I think my candidate and I are going to withdraw for a few minutes, talk about this in the hall. This okay with you?"

"By all means," Sara said.

…

"This is not over," was the first thing Bagwell said as he and Abruzzi stepped out of Kellerman's office. "I can still take her. I –"

"For Christ's sake," Abruzzi grabbed Bagwell by the collar and bumped him into the wall. They were thick enough walls that Sara and Kellerman wouldn't pick up any vibrations, and John was confident Bagwell wouldn't scream – would only stare at him in baffled shock for a while. "Why do you make me do this, Theodore? Do you have any idea how cliché this looks? When I got started in this line of work, I loved the clichés, missed as few of them as possible, but I'm getting old. Why'd you want to get beaten by an old man?"

He punched him in the stomach, the spot which'd cut off his ventilation completely for a few seconds. Again, no screaming – nothing but a short-lived coughing fit as Bagwell recovered, his face no longer a fish out of water but a drowned man in the midst of resurrection.

"I should have gone with the girl," Abruzzi said, nearly to himself. "My tie with your lot – I mean the Great Old Party – is historic. I didn't like you too much, Theodore, but I thought, you know, history matters. Well, shit, man. I should have chosen the future. I should have gone with the girl."

Abruzzi stepped back, his hand releasing Bagwell's collar and going about smoothing his own clothes; Bagwell's face was red, still more shock than anger. If someone were to walk past them in the corridor, they wouldn't think anything unusual had happened.

"I've invested a lot of money in you, Theodore. Money that's not going to get me half as much influence as I'd planned on. So here's what we'll do. Personal interactions between you and I are over. You're glad about that, I'm sure, so you don't have to think about my punching you in the gut and how much I'd like to do it again. Right? But you're going to be a strong opposition voice. You go about that however you like. Start a TV channel. Heck, a radio channel. The Governor was right – it is a good voice. You're going to make a lot of money and repay every dime I gave you, 'cause for every one that's missing, I'll knock out one of your teeth. We see eye to eye, so far? Good." Abruzzi didn't pause longer than a second. "Four years from now, when it's election time, you'll respectfully decline from representing the Republican party as a presidential candidate. Sometimes, you just get the one shot, and you either get on the train or you miss it – and you missed it, Bagwell. Make your peace with it."

Abruzzi checked his watch. "We should be getting back. Oh, I forgot to mention, we're taking their deal – you'll be worthless as shit to me in prison." He drew in a sharp breath of air. "Don't you love the smell of fruitless efforts? Jeez Louise. What a waste of time you are."

Abruzzi grabbed the knob on the door to the office. "I'll tell them you'll be a minute."

Then, Bagwell was alone in the corridor, panting for breath, still trying to piece what had happened together.

 _The wrong man to humiliate_ , Sara had thought, but not John Abruzzi, who could spot the seeds of danger as well as her, but who was confident enough in his armor not to fear retaliation.

…

They didn't shake hands when it was over. For what was left of the meeting, Bagwell hardly talked, sat back, red-faced and serpent-eyed in his chair, and Sara was conscious of his potentially becoming a threat in the future –

 _It's like I stole his presidency._

It didn't matter that she won by the popular vote. That's what she'd always be to him. The presidency-thief.

All four people agreed never to air the stolen pieces of privacy they held in their possession, except should the other party break their word first.

A close scrutiny of both Bagwell and Abruzzi informed Sara she had definitely made one enemy – if Bagwell could take her down, or somehow do damage to her legacy, he would.

Hell, if he could damage _her_ , if there were no witnesses, and they were both crossing the same street together, one night, she was certain she'd have to shoot him dead to stop him killing her.

But somehow, even as she studied John Abruzzi carefully, she sensed no animosity, not anger boiling beneath the charming surface of cordiality.

She knew she'd cost him a lot of money, and Abruzzi was probably a dangerous enemy to have; yet somehow, instinct told her he wouldn't seek revenge.

 _Maybe it's only that he's a fair loser_.

After they put an end to the meeting, and he was headed towards the door, he even turned back and said to her, "I did a bad thing to you, Governor." Without contrition or the pretense of remorse. "In the next four to eight years, you're going to find powerful friends are important. If you ever want a favor from me… you need but ask, Miss Tancredi."

Though he'd spoken with respect, Sara went over his offer cautiously. "I don't think I will. Favors from you strike me as coming with a price."

John Abruzzi smiled, a smile that was charming if dangerous, the way one only smiles when they're ahead of you. "Nothing's ever for free," he answered simply.

Bagwell stepped out last, as if it was a matter of pride to have the last word – or as if he didn't want to have John Abruzzi walk behind him, ever.

"I would be very careful, if I were you. The oval's a dangerous place, Miss Tancredi – it's easy to make enemies."

"If I want your advice, I'll be sure to phone you."

Though Bagwell chuckled, Sara wasn't watching his mouth, was too busy looking at his eyes – a bright, savage shine, like wildfire. When she lowered her gaze to his lips, something happened that sent a shudder to creep down her spine –

For a split second, the Senator's tongue flicked past his lips, not to moisten them, but in a pensive way.

An old habit, long shaken off, which reared its head again with the lack of sleep?

Deeper even than her hatred of the man's politics, Sara felt a brutal, visceral disgust for Theodore Bagwell. The thought that he had her naked on camera was suddenly odious.

"Goodbye, Governor. I'm confident we'll see each other again before soon."

"Formally, of course," Kellerman cut in. Eager, Sara felt, to put an end to this interview. "Good day, Senator."

Senator Bagwell didn't linger long past his cue, though there was time for his tongue to dart through his lips again, in a way that was so much like a snake, Sara's arms broke into gooseflesh. No wonder he'd had to repress the habit, to make it as a public figure.

A sigh of relief escaped her when the office door shut close behind them.

Sara turned towards Kellerman, with the intention to make some remark about Bagwell, or maybe Abruzzi – soon, she couldn't remember for sure because he surprised her so, with the cold command on his face, the steel authority in his voice.

"End it," he said.

It caught Sara off guard.

To have him face her, now, at the end of such a long night, for him to cheat her out of victory when she thought confrontations were over, at least for the day – it was still only nine a. m.

"What?"

Both of them were standing. Paul's hands fell unawkward along his sides, his posture and the grit in his eyes showing strength – _power_.

 _He's not the one running for president._

But only a fool would think power could be measured by that alone.

"Your affair. Whoever the man on the video is. It's too much of a risk." He shook his head, but compassion was nowhere in his eyes, in his words. "I wish this didn't even need saying."

Sara clenched her jaw. Your quickness to recover was what kept you alive in the jungle – even when the attack came from a friend.

"You don't tell me whether or not I keep a lover, Paul."

"I do."

She chuckled. "I wish you wouldn't. After all we've been through in the past forty-eight hours, I'd be all the sorrier to fire you." He said nothing. She might as well go on. "Because I don't have a husband, I can't have a love life? I can't have a lover because I'm a woman?"

"I'm assuming you didn't go public with your relationship because he's not suitable for public life. Frankly, Sara, I don't care why. I don't care if he's a recovered addict or an ex-con or whatever you generally look charitably upon."

"Stop, Paul," she warned him.

It was one thing for her to be aware of his coldness, that she could make out its overall shape from time to time, get glimpses of ruthless pragmatism in his eyes – it was another for him to show it overtly to her. Though they both lived in the same universe, they weren't of the same metal, nor were they ruled by the same laws. Sara had always known this. And she had valued his friendship and cared for him, all the time knowing that he had all the potential in his disregard for human feeling to become a monster.

 _You told yourself you could keep it checked, and at the very worst, he'd be your monster, not so dangerous as long as you kept him on a leash._

What a fool she'd been.

"If you wanted to come out with the relationship, that'd be different," he said. "I could write it into your narrative, but it'd have to be a televised courtship, and he'd have to become your husband –"

"No."

However things went from here, she knew this for certain – that she didn't want to involve Michael into this masquerade, to have him play the fool for the cameras.

He'd chosen the shadows when she chose the spotlight, and she wouldn't coerce him into a different life.

"That's what I inferred," Kellerman said. "So," he repeated, "end it. And it's not your good reputation I'm concerned about, Sara. If you _are_ going to be the president you say you are, that means radically breaking from anything we've ever seen in Washington. It means you're going to make very rich corporations very angry. It means you're going to be the most targeted president in history, that the handful of people at the top of the world are going to want to kill you more than they've ever wanted to kill anybody. It means," he finished, "that I don't want to have to worry about your sneaking out of the White House so you can screw your lover in the romantic moonlight."

Sara thought it useless to chide his crassness right now.

"You understand what I mean?"

"Yes."

"So we agree?" He smiled at Sara's silence; the surface-smile she hated. "If not your own security, think of his. Just think, if his face had been clear in the video, the risk he would have been running. When you come up against big guns, Sara, they go after those you love. It's why you're perfect for this. Up until recently, what you loved was the people – democracy. It's the only thing you would have been willing to lay down your life for, isn't it?"

"I told you to stop."

"Do you really want to find yourself in a position where you have to make an uncomfortable choice – the man you love or your country?"

It was Sara's turn to laugh; just as she'd hated Kellerman's smile, she hated her own laughter, which was cold and just as sharp.

"You should write sensational novels, Paul. I don't think my career's nearly exciting enough a narrative for you."

"You know I'm right, though."

"Yes." The word was cold in her mouth, like something dead, something from the tremendous depths of the underworld. "But, Paul, if I'd listened to people like you tell me how to lead my life, I wouldn't be who I am, or _where_ I am right now."

"Well," he said, "let me put it this way. After everything you've gone through, all the way you've come to distance yourself from womanly stereotypes – do you really want to give it all up because of _sentiment_? Don't you think you'll hate yourself if you allow love to cost you this one war?"

Sara grabbed her purse. Calmly. It was below her to storm out of the office like a teenage girl in fury.

"You're on the path to greatness," he said, as she was headed out. "Most of the time, greatness is lonely."

"Don't call me today, Paul. I need time to think."

"As you wish."

On her way to her car, Sara thought of how Lincoln had been sitting there a few hours ago, and what he'd told her about Michael – _a little colder and a little older_ , was how he'd described his brother; was very close to what Sara felt like.

Maybe, the thought flashed through her mind, it wasn't too late for them to find each other on the same path.

…

 **End Notes** : Sorry it took me longer than usual to update. We're getting close to the end of Part 1 (yes, I'm actually thinking of this story in several parts) and you can look forward to a Mi/Sa confrontation in the next chapter. I'm excited to know your thoughts!


	17. Back To The Beginning

The evening that followed the meeting with Abruzzi and Bagwell, Sara sat in her car, waiting. The lights from the streetlamps were enough for her to see clearly the charity center, on the other side of the street, where she had met Michael Scofield.

 _Something like another lifetime ago_.

It was he who'd suggested they meet here tonight.

They'd spoken briefly over the phone, although the relief of hearing his voice could hardly temper with the ice-stiff knot in her stomach.

"Charles lets me close the center on most nights." He said, which didn't surprise her – Michael no longer slept as much as your average American (and she was to blame, of course, late night rendezvous weren't exactly the doctor's order for a good night's sleep). "You can come around midnight. It'll be empty." There'd been an odd touch to his voice, a fondness for the past that couldn't qualify as nostalgic, when he added, "We're done with motel rooms, don't you think?"

Sara didn't know what to think.

Didn't know what she was doing there, silent in her car, watching the place where it had all begun, trying to determine –

 _What_?

Did she regret it?

The immediate awe in Michael's eyes, as if he was ready to worship her before he even met her, and how safe it had felt to smile and be charming to him. They were from such different worlds, she had felt it was impossible for her to love him, had only known her mistake when he was kissing her in the back of the storage room, and all her years of training at controlling the flow of emotions in her had been no use at all.

 _It's not the worlds we're from that matters, but that we're one and the same kind_.

And she had recognized him, right there and then, as he looked into her eyes – yes, part of her must have known from the first something about this shadowy stranger belonged to her, without need for words. The small talk and polite exchanges had been but pointless attempts to ignore the deeper calling in her soul that claimed Michael Scofield as her own.

But what was the point, if she could never be his, if she had already given herself over to the people –

 _The people_.

Love in America was a thing of many shapes and guises. If someone could be born again through love for Jesus Christ, Sara couldn't see why it shouldn't make sense for democracy to have been her first love –

It had happened early on. Already, as she saw her father fling its principles aside, as she understood how 'democracy' was just a pretty word to be brandished by politicians during heated debates, Sara had felt wounded, as if each insult was personal; which, in a way, it was. Hadn't she been born free and happy and equal to all citizens when she was born an American? Weren't these her birthrights?

There had been men, relationships, but the only thing Sara had truly loved, for most of her life, was the idea of making the world a better place. How could any person, let alone pimply teenagers, compete with that?

But then came this stranger, at ease in the darkness, who watched from the shadows, whose love was sudden and silent, unconditional.

It had been easy to let herself be worshipped – at first, there had seemed no wrong in it.

Yet again, she didn't think she could love him back, could love anyone, when democracy had already claimed her heart almost from the start.

 _Almost like I didn't choose. Like it chose me_.

In all this time, it had never occurred to her that she could choose otherwise – that there was another sort of life for her to lead.

Sara stepped out of the car and started walking towards the center. The door proved unlocked when she tried it and opened with a soft push, soundlessly.

Outside, the street had been bright enough with streetlights and advertising panels – Chicago, like most big cities, slept with its eyes wide open – but Michael hadn't switched on the lights inside the center, must have finished working to the light of only a handful of candles, whose flames still gleamed feebly in the ambient darkness.

He'd said something about this to her once – how he never used the lights in his own apartment. Environment-related reasons, of course.

But as Sara spotted him, standing at the other end of the room, a dark figure cut out of darkness, she knew there was more to it – that he preferred the shadows, found it a more fertile ground for a quiet life… maybe for other things.

The candles were enough for her to make out his face fine when he stepped close enough to her.

Without thinking, she reached out for him – his face.

It looked so different from the one she had kissed, all but forty-eight hours ago, she felt she needed to make sure she would encounter his warm skin and not something other, unknown.

Michael didn't flinch as her fingertips brushed over his shaven cheek.

"The scandal?" He asked.

"Averted."

"Definitely?"

"I should hope so. Your brother had a hand in it," the words ran out of her, not because it was important for her that he'd forgive Lincoln, or because she'd forgiven him herself, but out of a commitment to truth.

An important thing to be committed to – the only way for a politician to stop himself from becoming a liar.

Sara removed her hand from his face and took a step back.

This was not one of the times when their impulses would get in the way of serious conversation. Desire inside Sara lay cold, like a sleeping princess waiting for resurrection.

To kiss Michael would not bring back the magical simplicity with which they'd defied the rules ( _the laws of the jungle_ ). Even as she touched him, Sara had felt Michael was as remote from her as if a pane of glass stood between them.

"I shouldn't have left the way I did," she said. "After Lincoln showed up at the motel room."

"You had things to take care of."

That his voice was free from reproach didn't save her from remorse.

 _If I had stayed, we could have coped with what had happened together, and it would have fused us like two pieces of metal plunged into fire_.

Instead, they had each emerged from the experience changed in their own way, hardened, so that the way they used to fit together had somehow expired.

"What happened to you?" She asked. "Lincoln told me you quit your job."

"I didn't see the point in it anymore."

"As opposed to what?"

He watched her in silence for a while. Despite the changes that had taken place in each of their lives, their words were unclouded by embarrassment. Whatever shame they might have felt as a result of Lincoln's violation hadn't impacted the way they viewed each other.

"It's not working for me anymore," Michael said. "The way we used to do things. You fighting the important battles and my watching from home in front of my television screen."

"Michael, what happened the other night –"

"It hasn't been working for a while." He cut in. "Maybe if I hadn't met you, it would have been enough all my life, small-scale efforts – but not after this. Now, I don't think I can ever stand it again. To _watch_. To do nothing."

Sara was cautious with her response, was always cautious – suddenly, she could feel his awareness of it, how alertly she always treaded the ground between them, like he was an opponent to be carefully handled. So far as she could remember, there had never been relationships in which she had been able to act differently –

( _Everything's about power, whether or not people know it or are willing to acknowledge it_ )

She tried to strip herself clean of it, to make it so nothing remained between them but affection and honesty. But the fences wouldn't drop, like they'd grown into her skin.

Suddenly, she wished Michael would stay away from that world, for his own sake – that world which got into you, which melted into your bloodstream.

"You don't have to fight my battles, Michael."

"They're not yours," he said, without sharpness. "You're just one of the few people who's decided to take them on. Every one of us should feel concerned."

"Okay, but what you said when we started this. That this wasn't for you."

"I meant it."

Michael leant against the counter behind which Charles usually stood when he greeted her, in the day. How strange, to have this place for themselves, like a theater at night, whose props and settings all lose their functional appeal – where things ultimately become whatever you want them to be.

They could make love on that counter, right then, without a thought for caution or consequence.

Somehow, Sara felt that it would not change anything.

"But how much can a man take, Sara?" He asked. "How long can he stand powerless and wait and wait–"

"I didn't ask you to wait for me," she interrupted, before she could stop herself. "You said you would, but I didn't ask you."

"I didn't realize how much it'd cost me." Though he spoke with his usual softness, the words cut into her, past all defenses. "I didn't think of how involved I _would_ be, just by loving you. When I watch you, with Bagwell or others – it's like I'm there, Sara, like I'm everywhere you look, only I can't help you, and you don't see me."

Shadows swallowed his face as he lowered his eyes.

"It's one thing to choose pacifism over war when you don't have to watch it unfold, when you don't have to see the people you love out there on the battlefield. So, I can't do it anymore."

"What will you do?"

A shudder crept down her spine as his direct blue eyes met hers again. "These past weeks, I've been reading a lot about law. It's insane, the injustice people get away with because of one silly clause – or because the evidence disappears. No one bats an eye, right? Because we expect the good lawyers will work for the bad guys, and the mediocre ones will let them win if they can get a nice bribe. But what if it stopped working that way? What if the corruption all got exposed –"

"Is that what you're offering to do?" She couldn't find anything to do but stare in startle. "To become sort of justice vigilante? You're not a lawyer, Michael –"

"I could be, in three years' time. And there're a lot of things I could do, in the meanwhile. Learning's easy for me, Sara – it always was. In class, I could always remember the things the teacher had to check the textbook for. There's no reason why I shouldn't use it to try and make it so the right people are jailed, and the innocent are protected."

"Protected." She repeated in a strange murmur – stun, and a rare fascination.

Had the tables turned, was she the one gazing at him from an awe-struck distance –

"Until I can _be_ a lawyer," Michael said, "I'll find myself a few. Offer my services. A lot of lawyers hire help, you know; most don't find it in their range to remember thousands of pages on cue. My only condition will be to fight the right battles. I've got enough money aside to put myself through law school –"

"Forget the money, Michael." She wanted him to see the fear in her eyes, to know just what a serious mess he was getting himself into – even though, as she watched the understanding in his face, she knew that it would not make a difference. "There's a reason why the people you call bad guys get away with breaking the law. These people are dangerous. You decide to fight them, you're putting yourself in the line of fire –"

"Wonderful. That'll make two of us."

"You know it's not the same for me. When I'm president, I won't take a step outside without a handful of bodyguards following."

"Neither did Kennedy, and he was killed on national TV. Do you know how many American presidents have been assassinated, Sara?" She did and kept silent. "That's what I thought. So don't tell me that it's different for you. I've made up my mind."

She was silent for a short while. "So you have," she said.

"Where does that leave us?"

She shook her head. "When I'm in the White House, sneaking out to a motel room without people knowing," and by 'people', she meant Paul, "will be next to impossible. You were right. Maybe we're done with those."

"With the secrecy, and the lies –" He considered. "Yes."

Then both his hands were on her face, and a sudden flood of emotion brimmed her eyes with tears. Too unexpected for her to fight it, for her to think of anything past the immense relief of his warmth.

"But there'll be a day when it doesn't have to be like this, right? A day when I can knock on the front door of your house and take you out, take us both out into the sunlight?"

The imagery he used didn't surprise her.

"All we have to do is make it to the other side." He said.

Irritation came over without warning. She wished he would not be so dramatic. If this was going to be goodbye, for an undetermined stretch of time, then they should be parting as lovers rather than like-minded spirits. Flesh should prime over ideas – at least right now.

But it was like Michael had departed from the world of the common folk, was slowly soaring above all earthly worries to become only a goal.

It both frightened and fascinated her.

As he held her face close enough to kiss, without actually kissing, Sara slid her own hands beneath his shirt and went over muscle and bone attentively, as if the design in his mind could actually be read on his body.

Surprisingly, she found no pain anywhere, no intolerable hollowness in her chest, at the thought of what was to come.

Those past few months and their magic were already taking the colors of a dream, and the people deserved better than a sleepwalking president.

What she had loved about Michael was partly that he drew her _out_ of her jungle – not further in. She had never imagined they could both become partners in it and help each other survive in this world.

So it was natural – at least, at this second, to her sleep-deprived brain – that they should each pursue their own goals, complete the deep aspirations that gave shape to their identities, before they could fall in love with whatever they had become, in their new skins.

That they had left each other truly entered Sara's understanding as Michael bridged the distance between them with a kiss.

How odd, that it had happened when she had been so busy thinking of the scandal and how to fix it.

Already, when she'd stormed out of that motel room where the two brothers, like Cain and Abel, seemed to wait for something beyond human power – already, they'd left each other.

A wave of regret flashed over her. In her mouth, she tasted bile and tears and Michael.

 _I'm sorry_ , she wanted to say, not only to him but herself. What they had had, what they had _shared_ , in the months leading up to the election, had meant more to her than either of them could ever put in words. It was worth grieving – and she grieved it, even as Michael made love to her, on the floor of the charity center that had been their beginning.

End of Part 1

 **End Notes** : I'm sorry it took me so long to update, but I've been busy with Part 2 and actually started thinking of making this into a novel (which is just super exciting for me). I'm eager for your feedback as always and hope you've enjoyed this. See you soon ;)


	18. Years and Years

Part 2

"If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them." ― George Orwell, _1984_

Sara never even switched on her TV on the night of the election. In fact, she left her cell phone in her purse, safe under the coffee table, and shut every window in her elegant apartment in Lincoln Park, to be sure the noises from the city would remain safely on the other side.

Barefoot, but still clad in the tailored green suit she'd worn for today's press conference, Sara felt vaguely absurd, as if maybe the whole campaign had been a dream.

When she was sure to be as disconnected as she could from the outside world and the excitement of tonight's big event, Sara went to bed with a Herman Melville novel and a glass of red wine.

It wasn't just that she deserved a day off as much as anyone or that, if things went according to plan tonight, she wouldn't get the opportunity for one in a long time.

Sara was too old, she felt, for denial.

What she feared was failure.

Not really on a rational level, but that didn't stop anxiety from sticking its black tentacles around her brain – no one was expecting Donald Trump, or that the UK would vote Leave rather than Remain; they hadn't been _rational_ things but they had happened.

So, Sara hadn't wanted to go to dinner with friends, had declined even Paul's company, Paul who had been so involved in her campaign, the failure would feel nearly as much his as hers.

Should the America surprise the world again, tonight, should it favor the wheedling voice of a populist leader, Sara would brace defeat in private and with dignity, as she had done for most of her life with all things.

A single shiver starting from the pit of her stomach ran through her at the ring of her telephone, which she could hear distinctly from the living room.

The cool feel of the wooden flooring beneath her bare feet was somewhat surreal tonight. Sara had no notion of what time it was – only that the sky outside her locked windows was full dark and had been for a long while.

She read Paul's name on the caller ID and shuddered again, dread, excitement, and something she couldn't label, that bubbled thick and red with each beat of her heart, like some pagan malediction.

Oh, the thrill of absolute power –

Did she think she wouldn't feel it?

That because she would use it wisely, that her whole body wouldn't tremble at its sheer might and its formidable potential?

"Hello?" She said when she picked up.

For a moment, she could only hear Kellerman's calm, regular breathing over the phone.

It was foolish that she'd allowed herself to find out in this way, she thought, that for the time that his silence lasted, she felt completely in his power.

"Congratulations," he said.

A sigh broke from the deep recesses of her soul. Tiredness washed over her in one great wave. Her calf hit the coffee table and she pressed her other hand against the sofa to keep from falling.

"What are the numbers?" She asked.

"You mean you didn't watch?"

"Just tell me."

"Three hundred and sixty-two to one hundred and seventy-six. Three votes short of what Obama had on McCain, but you beat him when it comes to the popular vote – sixty three percent. Not quite what you'd call a landslide, but close enough. Damn, Sara. You really haven't watched the results? Thought tonight was a good night for a nap? You still there?"

"Just a sec."

Sara put down the phone and sat down – on the coffee table, as it turned out, because it happened to be closer than the couch.

"How soon do you want to meet?" He asked.

"After facing the press tomorrow."

"All right. We've got a lot of things to talk about –"

"I know."

"You won by a huge margin, but that shouldn't make you complacent. The Republicans still control the Senate and will at least until the mid-terms –"

"I know, Paul. Right now, I just want to take this in, do you mind? We've got four years ahead of us."

The hairs in her neck bristled with surprise – and something else – at the sudden sound of his laughter.

"Yes, that's right," he said. "We're in this for the long run – four years, then four more, then we'll see where we're at. Goodnight, Sara."

Silence sank in again in her apartment, like she'd put her head underwater.

"Oh, my God." It didn't seem like the most irrelevant thing to say right now.

A couple of months from now, she would sit in the most coveted office in the world, amongst the most powerful people in the country, and she would start doing what she had claimed was her life goal since she was five. She would lead. She would –

"Change the world," she said out loud.

What her father had wanted most in his life but could never grasp, what no woman in the country had ever been entitled to so much as hope for until this recent century.

After some time – just how much, Sara couldn't say – the young woman padded back to her bedroom, where _Moby-Dick_ awaited. Like the captain, she felt she had a lot on her plate.

Hard work and danger ahead.

"I'll take them on," Sara said, to herself, to her empty bedroom. Maybe to Captain Achab. "I'm not afraid."

She could hear Paul's laughter again in her mind, when she said this, and the voice of every man that had ever made her feel out of place.

 _Oh, you had better be ready, honey_.

 _If you just think of what's coming at you_ –

The thoughts, she felt sure, were only going to go round and round all night until she had lost all hope for sleep, but then, for the first time tonight, Michael entered her mind.

She saw him cool and quiet, the way he was when she'd last seen him, when even his kisses had an evaporating feel to them, and their goodbye had been like a dream, the present already become the past.

She saw him watching the results without surprise, with nothing but the sure confidence he had placed in her from the beginning.

Though unreachable, she could sense a certain proximity between them, like an invisible bond.

 _What about you, my love_ , she wondered. _Did you get what you wanted? Did you win?_

…

Michael watched the results sitting on the ground of his apartment, the book on his lap – _Criminal Justice, An Introduction_ – neglected for the past few hours. Though the couch and armchairs had gone surprisingly fast, there were still a few kitchen chairs left that Michael could have dragged to the living room for the evening, but he didn't really mind the discomfort – found he actually liked it, the feel of returning to the essentials.

Michael had started putting his furniture on sale the day after he saw Sara at the charity center, and though he put them up at what he considered was a high enough price, he was surprised at how quickly the items were bought and claimed, turning his apartment into an empty carcass. In the next few years, he wouldn't need comfort or to live somewhere pleasant to look at. Probably, he was going to be flying to different cities all the time – wherever the trials took him. There was some money aside, but if he was going to make it through law school, he was going to need all that he could get. Selling unnecessary furniture was one way to get there as any. In his big, empty apartment, Michael intended to have only the bare minimum – a bed, a refrigerator; and a television.

Champagne would have been in order, but there was only a couple of beers in the fridge that Lincoln must have left there when he moved out. Michael grabbed those, then went back to the living room and sat down on the floor again, looking pleased, but no smile.

Would America have elected her if he had been in the picture? Boyfriend, or husband? Or would that have drawn too much attention – pressure to throw Lincoln under the bus, to condemn his deadbeat of a brother, because someone who stands up for criminals can hardly be White House material, even as a plus one.

What would the title have been exactly; first man?

To some, it would have been a humiliation. _A man can't be boss in his own couple, he's not much of a man_. The time was ripe for this to change.

Sara and he could have been a team. He would have borne the subtle accusations with pride, if TV presenters tried to paint him as a feminized man, to hint she was the one to wear the pants – he would have answered the sly ones with directness enough to chill their bones.

"You think it's me you're insulting?" He would have said. "When you let on that I'm whipped, because she's not, that I'm weak because she's strong – that gender relations, _human_ relations, can only work in terms of binaries, zeroes and ones?"

Really, it would have been nearly too much for them – a husband. Because the first ladies had been like an afterthought, the grace of the country, nearly a weakness to make the figure of the president more human, the people would have been nearly as disturbed with a male first lady as with a female president. Maybe even more, because it would have raised questions about power between couples, questions that would reach the voters' own private lives, and to which they did not want answers.

Michael could have supported Sara in her presidency, could have been an active campaigner – what the hell? – for prisoners' rights, fought for the betterment of living conditions in penitentiaries, that might have even legitimated his relation to his brother, and Sara would have stood by him, would have carried the necessary bills to Congress to make their ideas into law.

They could have been partners as well as lovers.

But there seemed no point in thinking about this now.

Michael enjoyed his beer, just one, because he needed to get another few chapters done with before bed.

As they each celebrated her victory from their respective homes, Michael thought that they could have faced it – the press, the puzzled reactions. They could have carried mentalities forward by showing the world a man could love his wife and step back as she was elevated to the highest office in the country, that he could weather the hard times with her and bring her comfort when possible. Support _her_ , for a change, as she achieved greatness.

"Could she have stood this?" He wondered. He didn't know how long he'd been giving thought to all this. The beer was lukewarm when he took another sip.

Maybe the reason why their relationship had worked so well was that he was separate from her life – could she have allowed him in, when she had learned to fend for herself alone in this world? She had employees, like Paul, and probably a long list of others, but could she have tolerated a partner?

For the time being, Michael didn't see how he could bring an answer.

One day, maybe.

When she had proven herself and the world that she could do this alone, she would realize she didn't have to.

The love that had grown in the shadows, like flowers on a frozen soil – that was over, one of those things you can't go back to, can only revisit in the realm of memory and dream.

That did not mean he couldn't love her or didn't love her now.

Only that when he would speak of love to her again, it would be in broad daylight.

…

Theodore Bagwell was sharing drinks with a handful of fellow senators and loyal friends, on election night.

"A bloody disgrace," one of them spoke for them all, crushing peanuts with his knuckles over the table. "For a twenty-nine-year-old princess to inherit leadership of the country. I'm sorry, Theo. It's a sad day for us all."

"You can kiss goodbye our credibility as world leaders," another volunteered. "She won't take this country to war if that's where it needs to go. You heard her on pacifism. She's been raised on the principles of Gandhi and Luther King – Jesus. A sheltered teenager living in a golden bubble. My, oh my. Are we in for something."

"I'm glad we see eye to eye," Bagwell said, calm, confident – he'd taken the time he needed to cool this off long before the election. "And I'm sure a lot people in the Senate will agree with us. Because the Senate is still _ours_ , let us not forget that. America was built so that the executive could be countered by other branches when it exerted unlawful power – and so you see the huge responsibility that is ours, don't you, my brothers?"

A vague silence settled at the table. One of the men cleared his throat, "Of course, we're going to have to intervene if she messes up. Be the adults. She's still a kid, and so we might have to berate her like one –"

"No, no," Bagwell cut in, shaking his head with a grave air. "It's much more serious than that." He paused for a second. "By electing her as president, America has made a mistake that may be lethal to its own image. It's common knowledge leaders need to be feared and loved – and she may be loved, I've got eyes like the rest of you all. But will she be _feared_? Tut-tut," he moistened his lips. "With the slack grip she'll have on our borders, it's only a matter of time before terrorists pour into this country. Immigrants will breed like rats until America's crawling with these parasites. The damage will be irreparable, if we don't act fast."

"What do you suggest?"

A smile crooked its way up Bagwell's mouth. Oh, the fear in his fellow senator's eyes, as if he was about to suggest murder. Murder would be far too sweet a fate for that woman – just imagine the cult of martyrdom that'd arise around her fair dead body.

"I suggest that our priority," Bagwell said, "in the next few years, be entirely focused on making Sara Tancredi a one-term president. But more than that… she must be revealed as the most incompetent, the most unthinkable president this country has ever had. Someone the people will remember like a red iron tattoo; you know what I'm saying? It's the only way to make sure they're never tempted to elect someone like her again."

An uneasy pause between the senators. Bagwell had long been used to acting as a leader for these people, but perhaps it had never quite looked so personal or spiteful.

"Or do you want the America that she's promoting? Do you want a clawless, toothless giant staggering about the world stage like an impotent baby? An America with no borders – how long until no one at this table can recognize it as the land they grew up in? Until our own country is uncivilized and unchristian, corrupted to the backbone, and all because some idealist kid is for making love not war, and will open up our gates as widely as she opens her thighs no doubt, hey? If any one of you can look her in the face and call her Madam President without grinding his teeth, then call me on what I'm saying right now. But do it _now_."

Silence, still uneasy, but that none would dare to break so much as by clearing his throat.

"Good," said Bagwell. "Then we will be an opposition such as no president has ever faced. Cut the legislative branch from the president, you cut off their arm – as we know she'll already be impotent as a war leader, take lawmaking from her, too, and in the first few months already, we'll see her wriggle powerless on the floor, like a worm."

"But Theo –"

Bagwell raised dangerous eyes on the senator. They were not to look disgusted at his choice of words. Bagwell was, after all, the party leader, and partisanship must mean a lot in the United States, at a time when the current president was a walking buffoon that Republicans had spent the past four years making excuses for to the press and the public.

"I mean," he said, "aren't people going to turn against us?"

Bagwell's reply came with a feline grin. "If there's one thing the past three elections taught us, it's that this country is a divided one – and there's no use, now, talking about reconciliation. Nobody wants it. Sad truth is, we've reached a gap great enough that it can't be bridged, fellows – because none of us can imagine sharing this land with people whose ideas are a threat to American ideology. So this is not about showing a united front, is it?"

Bagwell paused. He, like Abruzzi, knew how to create effect.

"It's about acknowledging the divide, and fighting like hell to win – by taking the country to war if we have to."

"Legislative war," one senator interceded. "You mean that metaphorically, right?"

Bagwell didn't answer. The Cheshire grin was still beaming on his lips. "In the next few years, it's our duty to show loyal Americans that we still stand for their principles – and they can come to us, when the White House shipwrecks and it's all panic and death in there."

If anyone at the table thought Bagwell's words too ominous, they didn't say.

"My friends," he sighed. "Sempre paratus. Isn't that right?"

He picked up his glass on the table – looking, not at them, but beyond, at the television screen. As if he were giving a toast to America.

…

 **End Notes:** Oh the plans I have for this story. Please let me know your ideas, I'd be delighted if you could think of other characters to include in here (Gretchen's already booked for the next chapters). I also wanted to thank you for all the guest reviews that I unfortunately can't send private messages to. Your support means a lot – it means everything. Before I forget, the title is a reference to the wonderful HBO show of the same name which I recommend to you all. See you soon with an update!


	19. The White House

Sara had heard a lot of people say about the oval office that they pictured it bigger. But maybe that was just a performance, to maintain the mystical aura about you that suggests you're in on a secret, and surely the office of the American president was one of those places you want to act has a special trick to it, is more than you'd expect, else, you might look like its magic was lost on you.

Sara was alone in the oval ten, maybe fifteen minutes for that first time. There was nothing _magical_ about it in the strictest sense. Standing here, brushing the furniture with her fingertips, she was not suddenly overwhelmed with the place's historic power, the presidential blue of the carpet, the careful carving of the desk, or the ghosts of the forty-five men who had been its temporary masters.

What Sara would not say if asked by the press was that the office _smelled_ different from what she had thought. Really, she had expected a neater, less pronounced smell, like in a hospital, where doctors, like magicians (and politicians) perform wonderful deeds unfathomable to most of humankind, but it was immediately clear she'd been mistaken.

And just from that strong, distinct smell – old wood, alcohol and expensive suits, from what she could tell, but a lot of it was _other_ , was indeed a little magic – Sara felt on the receiving end of a clear message she imagined all other presidents had gotten before her, provided they were capable of humility enough.

That this office was not just a place for you to work in and entertain people, that you didn't own it but it owned _you_ , for as long as your term would last, and you had a duty to do right by it as you did to the people who had voted to put you there.

Sara laid her palms flat on the surface of the desk and waited, as if it were a human chest and she was trying to feel if it was dead.

How many women had been here before her, alone? What _kind_ of women? First ladies? Mistresses? And had they ever been invited to stay, after the small crowd of men – advisors and secretaries – were ushered in, to share their minds on the issues they discussed? How many _years_ had it been, since people so much as thought women had a mind of their own on the economy, whether it was the state's role to intervene in favor of the poor, or about war?

 _Not many years_ , Sara thought, still stroking the surface of the desk _, to this office_.

"We're going to see some change, you and I," she said. "I'm not sure you're going to like me."

There were knocks on the door. Sara greeted them with peals of laughter.

The higher office in the land, the office her father had coveted for most of his life, and for the next four years, people would treat it like it was hers –

It wasn't.

Not any more than it had belonged to the forty-five men before her.

Oh, it must have comforted their ego, allowed themselves to assert their superiority over the place's living soul when they grinned over a mike and said, "Not as big as I imagined."

"Come in," Sara said.

Kellerman appeared in the doorframe without further ado. He was ten minutes early, but Sara had expected it and had come even earlier, had wanted to see this place alone, without anyone's appreciation to fog her own.

He cast a rapid glance around the place – no awe, like her, but no student-like curiosity either – before he furrowed his brows at the way her hands were spread over the desk. "What are you doing?"

"Getting to know him."

"Huh?"

"Never mind. We were about done here."

As he waited for her invitation, she asked him to sit down – Paul could be so formal, and it didn't surprise her he would be at such a time.

"I wanted to see you before I left," he said. Reproach was never audible even if you carefully dissected his tone. Paul was usually good at taking things upon himself, and past the initial surprise, that's how she had expected him to react about her making him Secretary of State.

She remembered perfectly when they had first discussed this – in her office, and face to face, because Paul was terrific at phone conversations, and she wanted him to have no advantage.

"I don't see why you're unhappy about this," she lied. "It's a wonderful position. And, since I'm going to avoid going to war with anyone during my term, it's a crucial one. I don't know anyone who could be a better mediator between the world and I than you."

"But I could be useful to you _here_ , Sara."

It was clear, in the rare and genuine burst of emotion in his voice, that he had never even thought of her leaving to Washington without him.

"What job did you want?" She said, cutting it to the chase. Maybe because it made her uncomfortable, to have Paul leaning over her desk and looking at her like this – because she had planned this news as a way to beat him at his own game, and had never begun to view it as a betrayal between friends. "Maybe we should have had talked about this earlier."

"Honestly?"

He straightened up, and the pressure in Sara's chest loosened a little. Though threatening wasn't exactly the word, there'd been something unsettling about his proximity, and his soft grip on control, when he was usually so cool.

He shrugged. "Senior Advisor to the president."

"What?" Sara chuckled, before pointing out. "Well, Secretary of State will be better for your career. People will remember you, and it would raise your wages by almost thirty thousand –"

"You think I'm in this for the money, Sara?"

She didn't try to rebound. It was suddenly clear to her that Paul was entitled to his anger. There'd be no point in pretending she hadn't gone behind his back, or hadn't expected that's how he would take it.

"I know we tried to stay away from Washington because our campaign was based on opposing the elites it represents, but there's no avoiding it anymore. When you move into the White House, you're going to find yourself at the center of a world filled with very big sharks. What does the label matter? If I were Senior Advisor, I could be with you at all times."

Silence poured between them, unbearable in its transparency. Sara knew this was the way to tell him – to let him work it out on his own.

"But you don't want this, do you?"

He crossed his arms over his chest.

"You're doing this because you _want_ me away."

"It's not that, Paul."

It wasn't exactly. But she could see in the cold smile that settled on his lips that he wouldn't care for nuances.

"No, I understand, Sara. I was with you during the near-scandal with the video – it's natural you should want me half the world away most of the time throughout your term."

"Don't make it sound like I would keep you out of the decision-making process. You know I won't. But I need you for this. You know I have no military experience, and you're the only person I trust completely who does."

That she was lying never crossed Sara's mind, as she watched Paul's coldness soften (though in his eyes, cautious and sharp, he resisted the effect), even as she spoke the words _trust completely_. In this world, trust didn't mean the same thing as it did elsewhere – she trusted Paul as much as she could trust anyone here, trusted he would be willing to do just about anything to serve her better interests. But how much could you really trust a monster, even _your_ monster, should they be unleashed?

"Is it because you think it'll give me less time on my hands to investigate?" He asked. "Or because, if I'm in Cuba or Egypt or Israel, you think it'll be more difficult for me to look for him here in Chicago?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The secret lover, Sara. Don't pretend that's not what it's about."

Should she? Paul had never been one to deal always in honesty, but he did look like he would appreciate it now; and certainly, she wasn't above plain talk.

"All right. First of all, since you brought this up, I can spare you the trouble before you venture further down that line. Don't bother. It's history now. After our conversation in your office, when Bagwell and Abruzzi were gone, I spoke to my _secret lover_ and we decided it was best to go our separate ways at the moment."

Of course, she framed it in such a way that it was flattering enough for him to want to accept it. Distrust flared in his blue eyes, as he scrutinized her, went over the calm features of her face, smooth forehead, transparent gaze.

"Does that satisfy you?" She asked, flattered him still more.

There was no need for him to answer. She could see he hadn't made up his mind just yet.

Even as he faced her, now, in the oval office, a couple of hours before he would catch his flight to Belgium, it was clear to Sara he hadn't decided whether to believe her that this particular trouble of the secret lover was one he wouldn't have to look out for in the next four years.

 _He doesn't trust me, either_.

 _He's afraid I'll run to my ruin, kick into my own sandcastle, meet the fate of all these great heroes whose tragic destiny is scrawled in the palms of their hands_.

"Did you want to see me," Sara wondered, finding the couches of the oval office were more comfortable than she'd expected and wondering if it would have been more proper to sit behind the desk. "Or the office?" She finished.

"Do you need to ask?"

"I do."

She knew all too well Kellerman could be territorial enough that he would want to be the first in her team to be with her in the oval. That he liked to think of himself as her closest advisor didn't mean he wasn't right, or that she would mind humoring him sometimes – so long as it kept him away from the 'secret lover' tracks.

"Nothing embarrassing about it. If you want, I'll hand you a sheet of Sudoku puzzle and you can kill half an hour in here while I get my things in order – it's no trouble, Paul."

"Thank you," he answered with the complete lack of audible humor that defined their way of joking. "However tempting that is, I think I'll take business, instead."

"Have it your own way."

They went over the main lines of the meeting again. Paul liked that, going over things not two or three times but enough that nearly every contingency had been thought of.

The mode to adopt, as they had already discussed some weeks ago, was smart power. This first NATO meeting in Europe wasn't to seal an agreement with each nation committing itself to better preserve the environment.

"I'm done with this pointless handshaking and patting one another in the back as we all lead our own planet to destruction," Sara had said. "The main problem is we've been treating ecology as a political issue and it's not. It's not a matter of signing our names on a paper so we'll make our countries look good. It's about changing our way of life."

"So?"

"So, instead of negotiations, I want solutions. Conversation. And I want scientists around, the best America has to offer – I want to hear what they have to say about how we should fix these issues, not national leaders."

That was the plan, and Sara trusted Kellerman would know how to carry it out smoothly to term.

"So, who's next in line?" Kellerman asked at some point, without raising his eyes from his notebook – always, when Sara had a job for him, he took handwritten notes in a same notebook (whether it was yet uncompleted or whether Paul had half a dozen of those, ready to spare, she couldn't say). It amused her to imagine with what level of classified-secrecy Paul treated the notebook – if he hid it under his pillow at night, or slept with it right under his arm.

"You mean, my next appointment?"

Paul shrugged. "It's only 8 a.m.," he checked his watch, was one of those old-fashioned people who, although they were hooked on their phones most of the time, reading the news or talking to people for business, still glanced at their watches rather than their phones to tell the time. "I take it you have a long list of visitors scheduled after I'm gone."

"Well," Sara said, "you're going to be glad you missed the next one."

Paul's eyebrows furrowed. "Your CIA director?"

"I don't know why you don't like her."

"She's ruthless," Paul said, in the same earnest tone he had used to dissuade her from keeping her in the first place. "And a Republican."

"So were you, before you started working for me."

"But I'm not a leftover from the most ludicrous government in history."

"When such a big change is coming in government," Sara said, "it's good to have some degree of continuity – yes, even with a government of the type I'm leaving behind. And she was one of the few," very few, "smart people to work for the last president. She confessed she stopped him from starting a nuclear war with North Korea – twice."

Paul shrugged, unimpressed. "CIA directors are people who make uncomfortable choices – not every day, but often enough. Just their line of work. But you can tell it doesn't make her bat an eye anymore. I can't understand why you'd like her."

"I never said _I_ liked her."

"But you –"

"I said I couldn't see why you wouldn't. And I can't. You're not poles apart, as far as I can tell. Or are you just afraid you won't be the coldest person in the room?"

Kellerman gave her a _don't tease_ look.

"Well," she said, after he'd snapped his notebook shut and risen to his feet. "Have a safe trip."

"And have fun moving in. Seriously," he said, as if she might have missed how serious he sounded. For the first time since he'd stepped inside the office, Kellerman gave a long look around, taking in the overwhelming cream colors, the power-inspiring eagle painted on the blue rug. "This is yours. You've worked hard to get here. You're allowed to enjoy it."

A chuckle broke past Sara's lips, after Paul had left the office.

It didn't surprise her he would think that being president was a victory anyone would enjoy, or that she would actually need his permission for the purpose.

Sara breathed in sharply and leant back against the desk, facing the door, as the aura of the office – power and emptiness – filled her soul to the brim.

Her _victory_ was the occasion to change the world as much as it could bear changing in four years' time. To deal with people like Bagwell and Abruzzi on a daily basis, because she didn't fool herself that she wasn't going to meet a tremendous opposition –

The world was as it was because the small handful of people at the top were willing to do anything in their power to keep it that way.

It was time they see what she had in store for them.

Someone knocked on the door, and one of the people who had worked on Sara's campaign and had since become a loyal assistance announced, "Gretchen Morgan's here to see you, Madam President."

Sara traced her fingers across the surface of the desk as she made her way behind it, to the presidential chair.

"Send her in," she said.

…

 **End Notes** : Sorry I was a little long in updating. I am working on this story every day but I have a lot on my plate these days, and I'm also trying to save some time to read wonderful memoirs about the last two governments. What a world we're getting ;) I'd love to know your thoughts and ideas. Some suggestions have really helped me move the plot forward. Thanks again to all the guests for their nice reviews which I unfortunately can't reply to with PMs.


	20. The Top of the World

By January 2021, Lincoln's life had settled into a routine he would have laughed at as a young man, if you'd tried to convince him that's where he would end up. Getting up at 8.30 a.m. – extraordinarily late to most working Americans, no doubt, but earlier than Lincoln had ever been up before in his life – to a small but not ludicrously filthy apartment, for which he only paid 700 dollars a month.

Abruzzi had helped him find it, as he'd helped him find the decent job he'd promised would be his reward for years of loyal service.

The man had been true to his word, so far – you had to give him that.

"I want to do right by you, Burrows," he said, "because part of me still believes one day you'll get tired of your retirement. And if you want back in the game, I want to be the person you go to. That sounds fair enough to you?"

It did. What sounded even better was the deal Abruzzi was offering – work at one of the fanciest restaurants in Chicago, the sort of place where Lincoln never would have wanted to work or eat at if you'd paid him for it, but things had changed, and now, the place sounded to Lincoln like an opportunity.

Not really to become a decent waiter (which he undoubtedly had).

"All the best restaurants in town," Abruzzi had said when promoting his new job to Lincoln, "are mine." What exactly Abruzzi's ownership over the restaurants consisted in, Lincoln found it cleverer not to ask. "And I can place you with the best of the best, where tips alone will pay for your expenses. If that's the sort of environment you want, of course."

Was there some secret note of caution in Abruzzi's tone? Was he testing him?

Careful to look nonchalant, not to break from his usual coolness, Lincoln shrugged his shoulder. "I can wear a suit, boss, and serve caviar to snobs."

"I thought it might amuse you," Abruzzi answered. "I'll tell you what. I can get you an apprenticeship at the Everest. Lower pay, for a few months, but in ways that's even better – you'll earn all you need from tips, anyway, and reduce your income taxes. A win-win."

Lincoln nodded.

"The Everest isn't where I take my wife for dinner," Abruzzi went on. "I promised no more ties to me in your next line of work, and I mean that. I've no desire for that sort of crowd in broad light, anyhow – that restaurant is where the crust of society meets, you understand? Celebrities. Politicians. Now, the place has an elevated decency standard. I don't expect you to mention your time in Fox River, of course. We're talking about a place that's unforgiving of waiters who trip on their shoelaces. You screw up, you're on your own."

"Fair enough."

But Lincoln had done much better than Abruzzi had predicted, had actually stood out as the number-one apprentice – it wasn't so hard to dress up nice and smile in the face of people who nibbled at tiny platefuls of salmons and crab cakes and other unthinkable things to eat for dinner. And, after a near twenty-year crime career, Lincoln found he had steeled himself to become a good enough waiter. He did great under stress, hands that wouldn't shake even if he was carrying plates to a table where the Obamas sat surreally chatting. He could act fast, was quick to rebound in the case of unexpected situations; he never panicked. The first time Lincoln (a three-week apprentice at the time) calmed down a whole kitchen after a batch of twelve _crème brulées_ had been burnt, or _brulées_ , beyond salvaging, Lincoln discovered with some amazement that Michael wasn't the only brother to have inherited some leadership skills. Solutions, even in a kitchen under high pressure, were easy to Lincoln, who was used to admittedly higher pressure, like running for dear life as the police hounded at his heels.

And, what was maybe most shocking of all, Lincoln was good with the clients.

The sort of people that had stuck their noses up at him for most of his life now laughed pleasantly at his jokes, and eyed him like he was some unusual gem, a rough diamond, all the more precious for its irregularities. It was easy to earn their admiration, even easier to maintain it. It wasn't only that Lincoln could memorize the menus or the regulars' habits – wine on Wednesdays but champagne on Saturday nights for the Joneses, that couple of millionaires who'd won the lottery the previous year, and who loved to be called nouveaux riches as much as they loved to pretend to hate it. Lincoln also remembered their life stories and what sort of chat they liked with their dinner.

Most enjoyed gossip and turned such an eager ear to Lincoln, you'd think he was the high school queen sharing rumors on her lowly subjects.

 _Ah, you waiters pick up some good stuff on people, dropping in on their conversations with_ petits fours _in the one hand and a bottle Cabernet in the other._

And Lincoln would say, "You bet," with a charming smile, just the right amount of cocky. These rich people were so used to a tame, exaggeratedly respectful behavior, to really impress them, you had to take them out of their comfort zone, smile in ways they hadn't been smiled at since fame happened to them.

In truth, he really did learn some interesting things about interesting people. It wasn't just movie stars but congressmen and congresswomen, or men Lincoln had never heard of before until one of his fellow waiters would grab his arm and speak into his ear, "See the guy at the bar in the white striped suit? That's Steve Easterbrook." When Lincoln didn't bat an eye, "The guy who owns McDonald's."

"Fucking hell," Lincoln mumbled.

These people, Lincoln found, the CEOs, the owners of worldwide industries, had much, _much_ to say about politics, and about the new president.

"Poor little thing," he caught one of them saying once, as he was going around the table, serving champagne. "Thinks she can ban us from the schools, does she?"

School lunches, Lincoln was astonished to learn, wasn't just the matter of kids getting through the day and splashing food at people to blow some steam in between classes, but an affair worth billions of dollars.

"Give her time," another answered. "She's only a few weeks in. It's fashionable to talk about every little issue going on – soon, she'll see she has more important things to care about than what we feed American children. I say we wait a little. Probably, she won't even see this through with legislation."

"If she tries –"

"Dissuasion. Like we did with the Obamas."

"Would you like ice with that, sir?"

"Thank you."

It was crazy the sort of things people said around him, as if being the person that poured their drinks provided him with some kind of invisibility.

He was just a smile and a twinkle that went with the meal.

The Everest was a strictly evening restaurant, opened at 5.30 p.m., so there was no reason for Lincoln to get up in the morning at all. It was true that many nights ended up taking him to fancy bars, where most of his colleagues would spend their ludicrous tips on cosmopolitans and martinis – buying them for themselves and for girls, because showing off was as much part of the fun as getting wasted. It was their well-earned reward to act like big guys, as if waiting on some of the richest people in the country somehow trickled down on them like fairy powder.

Lincoln drank with them, but not much. Most of the money he earned, he would stash under his pillow, along with the notebook he'd recently purchased – already, he'd gone through nearly half of the pages with his drunken, likely undecipherable scrawling. He'd have to write a cleaner version, one of these days, but right now, the notes were just for him; the fewer people could read his handwriting, the better.

For sure, his clients at the Everest wouldn't be too happy to know he kept notes of their conversations, which he technically wasn't even supposed to hear.

As he wrote down everything he remembered on the lined pages, flashes of primary school came back to him – it'd been such a long time since he'd written anything by hand. But after all that had happened – how he'd seen Roland access the computer and cell phone of a US Senator easy as pie – Lincoln felt it was safer for this to be inside a notebook, which no one would look on twice, than on a Word document, which he could just email to his brother when he felt it was time.

Who knew who was watching, these days – after Edward Snowden, after Russia's play in the 2016 election, how could you trust anything online?

Besides, handwriting had an old-fashioned feel, not without its charms.

Lincoln had no clear idea what he would do with these notes – only that Michael might need them, in the big enterprise he'd thrown himself into.

And whatever he could give Michael to start repaying the unpayable debt he owed him, Lincoln would give without flinching.

Life was not all about redemption, to Lincoln. There were fine moments – satisfaction and pride that he could manage this lifestyle at all, that rich people liked him, like you like the most thrill-providing ride at a funfair. To them, he was sensational, exciting. The women at the tables would look at him like he was actually of a different material than whatever men they were with – like he was more alive, more dangerous, more sexual. Like a wall existed between rich and normal people, and the latter were simply more _animal_ than the other.

Lincoln enjoyed this, in a little twisted way. He enjoyed drinking, not as a way to show off like most of his colleagues, but as a palliative. And he actually enjoyed doing legal work and earning good money, though much of it came from wheedling millionaires at their dinner tables.

Guilt didn't come as you hear it does, before sleep, denying rest to your soul as well as your body. At night, when he came home and crashed on his bed, Lincoln was often too drunk to think about anything, let alone, what he had done to his brother and Sara Tancredi one night of Halloween.

But when he woke up – early, so he could look up the guests that had made a reservation at the Everest – when he opened his eyes and lay still in his bed, a wave thick as tar flooded Lincoln's spirit, and he would see himself crouching in that deserted building, trying to get decent shots of the naked bodies moving around in the motel room opposite him, and the horror that filled him as recognition dropped the curtain from before his eyes.

 _My brother_.

Lincoln endured the torment steadily, like a rock weathers the beating of the waves during a storm.

It was fair he should feel like this, if only once during the day.

Lincoln had heard of worse punishments.

…

Michael stood motionless for a moment, before his living room wall, which now looked abnormally crowded in his near-empty apartment. On the wall were the faces of the main political actors that led the country, whether from the front or from backstage. The good ones, among whose Sara's face was a smiling red-haired beacon, an ice pick in Michael's chest, every time that he looked ( _only the sort of ice that melts and burns its way inside your system_ ). And the bad ones, more numerous – Theodore Bagwell and John Abruzzi's pictures were like drops in an ocean, unnoticeable, a sea of silent scandal and corruption.

It didn't matter how long it took, Michael thought, calm, as he stroked his fingers over the cobweb patterns on his walls. Someone in this country needed to bring these people to justice, one way or another – and maybe it wouldn't just be him. Maybe he would only expose a handful.

"But you have to start somewhere, right?" He said to his empty apartment – or maybe to the avalanche of faces on his living room wall.

Then, Michael sat on the chair before his desk, got ready to work and switched on the TV, in case anything should happen he couldn't miss out on. No sound, only images.

His mouth broke into a smile as he recognized the program by Sarah Silverman – _I Love You, America_.

…

 **End Notes** : Again, thanks to all the guests for the incredible feedback. Please keep sharing your ideas!


	21. A Bad Idea

When Gretchen Morgan first stepped inside the oval office, Sara thought again that it was obvious, why Paul would not like her. Miss Morgan, in her black suit, and every inch of surface perfectly under control, was the incarnation of power – maybe not political power, the sort that gets voted for, but a more primal power, whose deep voice speaks to your blood and bones. Precisely the sort of power Kellerman incarnated to Sara's mind.

Because of her own limited military background, and the personal hatred with which Sara viewed the post 9/11 measures such as the infamous Patriot Act, she had known from the start that her relations with the C.I.A. would be strained at best.

And it had struck her, immediately, as she took one look at Gretchen Morgan, that this was not the sort of woman she wanted as an enemy.

More than enough evidence suggested Morgan would be good at her job. Firsthand experience with the last government might come in handy to Sara, and it wasn't as though she would rather work with those who had shown partisan support to their president even in his worst moments of racist zeal.

Gretchen Morgan, at least, and as was proper to her mystery-laden function, had been silent and invisible for most of Trump's tenure. But her professional achievements, or so Sara had read, were remarkable. Diplomacy and force lived inside that confident face like two sides of a same coin, and Sara trusted she would know to show the right side at the right moment.

Straight blue eyes met hers with the flash of a polite smile as both women shook hands.

"Miss Morgan."

"Madam President."

Gretchen was the first person to sit in the chair opposite Sara's office, and made it look her own.

Sara found it best to be to the point. "I think it's clear from our last conversation and from the campaign I ran last year why I would want to speak with you early on."

Gretchen shrugged, a clever play of innocence yet sagacity. Most definitely. Sara did not want this woman working with the opposition, or in any other team than hers.

"Well, your Secretary of State just walked out of here." She seemed to think it was a decent clue. "I'd say before you can focus on domestic issues, you'd like to get a few things straight in terms of foreign policy. You think it's important that people know it matters to you."

Sara considered this, decided she didn't really like for this person to state out loud what she was thinking. But working relationships are like marriage – a series of compromises and threadbare grins.

"What I'm doing is straightforwardly turning my back on my predecessor's policies." Sara said. "That's not what I'd recommend for a serene government, unfortunately some presidencies leave you no choice other than a complete U-turn."

"The bombing, in Syria. You want an end to it."

"For starters. But we can talk about the means of this next week," Sara had scheduled a meeting with her national security team, and she would like them all onboard for this. "What I wanted to say is we're going to break from the last government not just in terms of policy but also in terms of image. The message we want to spread abroad, in this early start, is reassurance."

"Right," Gretchen said. "That you're not that idiot with his finger on the nuclear button."

That Morgan would refer to their last president as an idiot in front of her was startling in its forwardness – and it made Sara a little cautious. Honesty was fine, but flattery – if this was implicit in her debasing number 45 – was not.

"That's the message national leaders will care most about, yes. But other people, such people who are thinking of seeking asylum in this country, must also get the change. That I'm not going to lock anybody up in cages at our frontiers. Those people drowning at the gates of Europe might be one of this young century's worst tragedy. It's time America becomes the land it's been advertising itself as since the birth of the country."

"A land of open immigration."

"I get that, as the person most concerned with terrorism, this would sound like a risk to you. It won't be. I've got a team of wonderful people working on this." Sara didn't add, _including you_. Wanted to show her that flattery, or patting each other on the back, was a waste of breath and time. "But like I said. We can work on how to make this into policy next week."

Gretchen smiled.

A tremor of discomfort travelled down Sara's back, and it took effort for her to remain still and visibly at ease.

"So, you wanted to talk about the image of your new foreign policy."

"I wanted to have a chance to make it clear to you that the C.I.A.'s actions during my term will reflect that image. And I do mean even its most private actions. I don't know how much leeway your agency got under different presidents – really, I don't care. But I said in this campaign that I'd run a transparent government, and I'm determined to keep that promise."

"To a certain extent."

Sara didn't contradict this. "I don't suspect it's all too clear to anyone but your agency how well you respected Obama's ban on torture during Trump's organization – or even Obama's."

"We call it enhanced interrogation," Gretchen said.

Sara raised both brows. _Transparency's good for the campaign, not so much for your face_. How many times had Paul told her that?

"I'll call it what it is if you don't mind."

"Not to the press, I should hope. Everyone knows the C.I.A. used those methods back in '01, but if you don't want it on the frontpage of every newspaper –" The white grin on her wide lips had something special to it, something that made Sara's gut tighten. There was a French word for that smile. _Carnassier_. "Well. The press has being going through a rough time. They're hungry for attention. Material for 0juicy headlines will only make them hungrier."

"I'm not especially concerned about the press right now." Sara said. "What I want is your pledge that such measures won't be used in my government. I know I'm going to have to rely on you," she said – reliance was not the same as trust – "but I will make sure that you keep to your word. Terrorism today is a real threat, but it's also a witch hunt. The way we behave in those has a lot to do with how we make history. So long as I can help it, there'll be no camps, untried executions, or _torture_ , in the part I get to write."

"Of course, Madam President." But there was still that disquieting smile on her lips. More disquieting was the earnest way in which she added, "We understand each other completely."

…

Sara's first night inside the White House was by no means so calm.

Deep breaths, she thought, inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth, and just relax. _Relax_. She would not be the first president to burst out of the Master Bedroom having a panic attack.

"Donald Trump has slept in here," she said. "I'm sleeping in the same bed as Donald Trump."

The cream-colored bedroom received her statement without comment. The oval had been different, with its aura of power – but this was plain weird, lying down inside sheets that had hosted the most powerful men in the country. To have her bare skin _touch_ those sheets was ridiculous, and Sara wished she could have kept her home, could have ruled the country from Illinois.

The hours strolled by. One a.m. gave way to four in what seemed the blink of an eye.

"How does one sleep in a room like this?"

Sara wondered if it happened to all presidents, some rite of passage. For hours, she remained fixated on the minute details of the crystal chandelier, so elegant and delicate, befitting an ice palace.

 _I hate it_ , she thought after a while.

When the black of night had broken into the earliest shades of dawn, outside the window, Sara got on her feet, slid inside the night robe she'd left hanging on one of the armchairs near the coffee table at the center of the room.

Then she started pacing. The feel of the carpet beneath her toes glowed as unreal as flying fairies in her mind.

"Barefoot," she said. "In the White House."

Sara grabbed her cell phone on the bedside table and fought the urge burning on her fingertips.

 _Just call Paul_ , she told herself. _It's past noon in Europe_.

But she did not _want_ Paul, however apt he might be to make her feel better, however how flattered he would be that she should call him, from the Master Bedroom in the White House. Oh, he would crack a laugh if she told him a bit about the absurd thoughts that had crossed her mind tonight –

Like, what sort of pajamas did Abraham Lincoln wear? How many of them woke up during the night for a secret snack or a bathroom call?

It was best she didn't call Paul, except for work, anyway. It would mean too much to him and too little to her – to get him inside this surreal bedroom by proxy.

But calling Paul felt like the easiest way to stop herself from doing something stupid.

"Really stupid," she said.

Again, the majestic bedroom gave no answer, and Sara started dialing Michael's number.

…

 **End Notes** : Sorry I was a bit long in updating. I'm so eager to know your thoughts on this. Lately I watched a Sarah Wayne Callies interview where she talked about refugees, so I thought it'd be nice to have it fit in this story. Please keep sharing your wonderful ideas!


	22. The Abyss

When Michael got the call from Sara, somewhere past 5 a.m., he hadn't been sleeping. For the past two months, Michael had rediscovered life at its core, stripped of the structure of work and social relations – he did not go even to the center anymore. It turned out that things such as getting seven hours a night and eating three meals a day was completely artificial. On most nights, Michael found he was fine with four hours, sometimes five, and ate only when the connections in his brain seemed under a black haze.

Anyone who'd take a glimpse at his dim near-empty apartment might call it an unhealthy lifestyle, but Michael knew better now than to trust such labels. All that mattered was, so far, this was working for him and carrying him through to where he wanted to go.

Each day, the young man absorbed hundreds of pages on law and justice – how to apply it and how to make a mess of it, which was far too frequent for Michael's liking.

Of course, Michael's self-teaching wasn't perfect. There were times of frustration, when he would sink his nails into his thighs, trying to remember the precise wording of this or that law. But considering he'd concentrated years of learning into an intense couple of months, he wasn't doing bad at all. Starting last week, Michael had decided to follow major trials, not only on television but in person, and had been part of the audience when the state of Illinois arraigned one David Apolskis for grand theft. Already, in the first session, Michael had found himself making a mental list of all he would do different, if he were the one representing the kid –

Looking at young David standing trial was hard, as Michael had expected.

There were reasons why he had veered away from the path of action so long ago, why he naturally preferred to hide in the shade than for the sunlight to beam on every wrong and ill of society, on the faces of all of those that slipped through the cracks and toppled into the abyss. As he sat there, among the audience, silent, Michael could feel the pain of David Apolskis, like it were his own.

Empathy, to the degree that Michael experienced it, was like a curse, would have been enough to make him renounce society altogether, if he hadn't learned to temper it with time. There was no saving the world, or saving everyone. Michael used to think he would have wanted to do a job like this one, something with meaning. He'd clung to the idea until he was eleven years old, when he had one nightmare still fresh enough in his mind, he remembered it perfectly.

In the dream, young Michael was standing on the deck of a boat, outside of which the waves of a stormy sea stared into his eyes. A hundred hands leapt up and broke the surface of the water. Masses of drowning people reached out for the boat, and the multitude sent his mind into wild loops of helpless vertigo, as Michael could not focus enough to choose who to offer his hand first, could only watch as that ocean of drowned clamored for their lives.

Recently, he hadn't only been thinking of this dream but having it – all over again.

"You care too much," he said to himself, during a short break from his law book, as he got water boiling for some coffee.

So many ills in this country would make any attentive onlooker want to tear out their eyes, but the plight of illegal immigrants and refugees was to Michael particularly sensitive – who were the authorities of this country to deny shelter to those who suffered?

Maybe also because of all the gilded coating of the American dream, this one lie was the most heart-rending.

"Give me your tired, your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore." Michael recited in a breath. "Lady Liberty, what a great disappointment you are."

No sooner had he spoken these words than his cell phone began to ring. In a blink, Michael swiveled to glance at the countertop that stood between his kitchen and living room, where his phone had lain forgotten throughout the night. Some ten seconds passed. The chime of the telephone got lost in the soaring whistle of the kettle.

Call Michael old-fashioned, but he liked those kettles that sang like ululating wolves, or the horns of a great boat setting sail.

People still called Michael, of course, but not past five a.m.

Recently, he'd been in contact with a lawyer whose latest cases he had watched closely, hoping that giving him free advice would annoy him only for some time before he curbed his pride and took the assistance he needed.

The caller ID was of no help, announcing an unknown caller.

As Michael's fingers hovered over the surface of the vibrating phone, he thought, _It's her calling_ , and tried to deny knowledge of it at the same time, to brace himself for the coming disillusion.

"Hello?"

"Hi."

Her voice blasted into his ribcage like an icepick, blowing flames into his chest, red and breathing and more alive than anything he had felt since last November, when he'd touched her, and the taste of her on his tongue, the smell of her on his clothes, teased his senses until even the most tenacious ghost-traces had washed away.

Michael, in his current way of life, was like a man turned vampire – living indiscriminately in the solitary darkness, a wanderer astray from humankind, with only one purpose to keep him from disintegrating into an endless midnight.

The sound of her, even over the phone, even in the span of a single syllable, penetrated the dead carapace that had built over his sensitive heart.

"Sara."

Michael brought his knuckles to his forehead and turned away from the living room, as if the dim lamp whose soft radiance had been barely enough to read suddenly burnt his eyes.

"Morning, stranger."

Oh, that playful tone, and he could picture her smile, deadly in his mind as it would be in real life.

"It's been a while."

"Strangers, are we?" He said.

Could not keep up with her perennial ease – could not pretend this did not matter, that he wasn't like an alcoholic presented with a glass of wine. Or a vampire, undead for months, suddenly tasting human blood and life.

Silence on her side was grave with understanding.

Good. She should know, what she was doing to him. No pride tempted him to conceal it.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm having a strange night."

"I figured."

Michael secured himself, leaning against the countertop. _At least, I won't fall_ , _won't be thunderstruck and drop to my knees right where I'm standing_.

"How's Washington? And the White House?"

"I hate it."

"Sensible of you. I'm not surprised."

"You've ever seen pictures of the Master Bedroom? It's horrid, all that show of wealth. I'm nervous to touch anything, like I might turn to gold."

"It's a far cry from our motel rooms, is it?"

He felt a woeful smile playing about his lips, refusing to settle for sure – if he looked in a glass, he was sure his face would be an ever-changing image, incapable to freeze into one clear emotion.

Sara was silent.

He shouldn't have brought up the motel rooms, but she had started, telling him about her own bedroom, so all he could do was picture her there. Sleepless, lightly dressed, with that large double bed she'd tossed and turned in. It helped a little when Michael focused on the White House, its overwhelming luxury a distraction from Sara herself. It really was no wonder she should hate it. Probably, she'd have sooner led the free world from her apartment in Chicago, rather than be forced to move into what must feel like a palace –

Oh, we like to think monarchy's over, Michael thought, but there's still that same gulf between ordinary people and those who have power, incredible wealth on the one side and on the other, the blackness of the abyss – that abyss where all the drowning people reached out for him in his dream.

"How are you?" She asked.

The playfulness had drained from her tone, and it was a relief, to hear her so serious.

Though the intoxicating smell of her red hair still teased his senses and sanity, at least, she shared his suffering – some of it, to some degree.

He didn't suspect he'd ever gotten under her skin the way she'd gotten into his.

Like a blasting conquering wind, from that very first smile as he saw her in the flesh, at the center, no longer an incarnation of all his ideals on night shows, but something more, unexpected. Love had planted its flag on Michael's body and mind before she'd even said hello.

Thoughts of the origami rose he had crafted for her what seemed so long ago flashed through Michael's brain.

In his hands, the immortal flower had felt a perfect symbol for their romance, and lost, it was all the more adequate.

"Is it safe to talk?" He asked, to deflect from answering her question.

He could picture her shrug. "That phone is supposed to be safe enough to talk about state secrets. I'd say it's safe enough for us. Michael, please – are you okay?"

"How could we be, either of us? This country is sick, Sara – sick with divisions and prejudice, and the pain of innocent people. After we've taken it upon ourselves to _do_ something, how can we be fine, how can it even enter the picture?"

"You can't do this to yourself," she said.

Nails sinking into his palms as he closed his eyes, tried to permeate his soul against the softness of her voice. What point was there in kindling anew the fire in his chest, when he couldn't have her, when he could only wait for her and go insane or take his own shot at changing the world –

Pain hovered over her plea, like a black storm.

He could feel how it hurt her, that they were talking for the first time in months, and he could only talk to her about all that was wrong – oh, he could go on for hours about social ills and divisions, the tensions between the police and ethnic minorities rising to razorblade sharpness, the suffering of poor people, when the term poverty now seemed a word dirtier even than racism in the mouths of politicians.

What he couldn't talk about was _her_ , and the wounds she had unknowingly inflicted during their time together – wounds of pride but also of sentiment; less red and showy, but longer to heal, harder to discover.

 _Better we talk of what I've done to myself,_ he thought, _than what she's done to us_.

He had said he'd wait for her, because that was his only option – she hadn't asked if he would face this battle with her as a partner, into the light. To herself, she might think she was protecting him, but he knew better, knew he had shared her from the beginning with a second lover – more like a husband, to whom she was pledged by duty and a tenacious love that had weathered the numerous blows of time and circumstance.

This was the only way Michael could describe Sara's relationship with politics.

So that, from the beginning, he could never be more than a lover – forbidden and invisible.

He might have loved her with the sort of epic love that is immortal, forever remembered and enshrined like a fine jewel in the lasting crown of imagination. Guinevere and Lancelot – he was a lover, also. But that love had been confined to the shade and fringes, had been consummated a few hours a week in motel rooms, had never gotten the shine and glory it probably deserved.

 _I would have come with you_ , he thought, the words that would burn his mouth if he spoke them out loud. _If you had asked me to follow you into this world of danger and lies, I would have come, Sara, and we wouldn't be where we are now._

"Why not?" He answered after some time. Better to disappoint her, to let her feel his distance, than for her to know. "What difference does it make? How do you take it?"

"It's different for me."

Michael managed to restrain his amusement to an inaudible smile. He knew how much she hated to say this sort of thing.

"The people placed a huge responsibility on me when they voted me into power. It's not the sort of burden everyone that's aware of all that's wrong in this country ought to carry."

"But you chose to carry it. You ran for president. You fought like hell for it."

"I did."

Her voice grew stiffer.

 _Now, she's wondering if that's all I ever saw in her – the future American president_. _To her, I'm lost in a maze, living in a layer above reality, lost in Right and Wrong as some people get lost in drugs or other stimulants._

But you don't _love_ someone based only on abstract ideals the way he'd loved her. Abstractions are things you can't touch, and he had loved her only from the moment that he'd seen her, there, in his reach – not as a beautiful face on television.

"So, you understand why I would do it – fight for what matters."

She was silent.

Resented him, still, for making this about the world.

Was he punishing her, he wondered, unconsciously trying to make her taste the bitterness of her own medicine?

When Lincoln had shattered them, in that motel room, on Halloween, and the threat of scandal had started looming, it was the world she had cared about – not what this had done to them, privately.

And the damage had been severe.

Michael had lost much more that day than an origami flower.

"I shouldn't have called," she said.

Not to hurt him, or get him back for hurting her, but he felt the cut of her words, deep in his flesh, where the warmth of her voice had recalled feeling to life.

"I'm happy you did," he said.

The walls fell between them. Michael could feel her getting closer, and closer, until her mind was a heartbeat away, ever intangible.

"Michael –"

"Tell me about it," he asked. "The White House."

Though there was no plea in his voice, she must have sensed his need, because she did as he asked. Told him about the place rather than the people in it (she still had secrets to guard), spoke of things strictly impersonal. God only knew how long until they would speak again, and what would be the harm, now, in such random talk – in only hearing each other's voices, and pretending the world around them wasn't falling apart?

…

 **End Notes** : This has been a very intense chapter for me to write. Naturally I'm eager to know your thoughts and theories. Don't be strangers. You make this story alive ;)


	23. Fire

**AN** : Before you start reading the chapter I just wanted to go ahead and point out that my depiction of Republicans in this story at this stage has clearly been an exaggeration: basically, I'm generalizing and magnifying certain striking certain traits that have come up in _some_ Republicans, starting during Obama's presidency. So, if it feels like I'm caricaturing Donald Trump all the time, please bear in mind that this is not meant as an attack on Republicanism or Republicans in general. Just to make sure I'm not offending anyone ;)

…

The first time Sara had stood before an audience, she had realized what a truly fickle little thing time was. That was middle school, by the way, a presentation on FDR's New Deal, which Sara had taken very seriously. A clock, on the opposite wall, stared Sara in the eye throughout the awkward preliminaries when she cleared her throat, adjusted her hair (green move) and wrote the title of her first section on the board. Writing on boards is an extinct breed by now, but she'll never forget the feel of chalk in her sweaty hand – it would take her years and years to build defenses against those shows of weakness, and moist palms were the hardest to shake off, worked so closely with human instinct. Sara shook her fair share of sweaty hands, even inside the White House, which served as evidence that not everyone could lose the habit.

There was no particular reason why Sara should remember that sixth grade presentation, except from that lesson it taught her about time. How you can't rely on your senses at all to help you estimate how much has gone by since you've started to talk. When she was halfway through her first section, she would have sworn at least fifteen minutes had gone by, with all those eyes peering at her, staring it seemed at the anxious rashes growing on her collar and making them redder, but she was down only to three minutes, the clock said. Later, when she grew more confident, focused on her facts and her message rather than the faces of her classmates, ten minutes flew by faster than ten seconds, and she had to rush through her last section.

Well. Now, she thought she ought to have known that time in the White House would be as treacherous as it had been, during that first presentation, and eighteen-hour days would turn into months faster than she could comprehend.

During her first few months at the White House, a few things became abundantly clear, notably that lawmaking with a hostile Republican Senate wasn't going to be easy – in fact, that they were going to make the least reform excruciatingly hard, if only for the sake of opposition.

"Can they do this?" Sara asked Kellerman, pointlessly, during one post-midnight meeting in the oval, after the rest of the company had gone home. "I mean, can they actually talk every measure I try to introduce to death –"

"They have no shame, Sara." Kellerman said. "Before, it might have been different. They might have cared that it made them look like sore losers to the public, feared accusations of sexist bias. If you'd asked me fifteen years ago, I would have said – no. They'll come around." He shrugged. "In post-Trump America, though, I'm not too sure the Republicans care in the least what the press says about them. What does it matter, when no one even trusts the press anymore? The Republicans really became that dangerous in the 2016 elections – when they lost their credibility. Losing face in politics used to be fatal. Now, I don't even know the rules anymore. They've got nothing to lose. They'll bleed you dry if you let them."

Sara pressed her knuckles to her forehead. There was comfort in this, finding herself alone with Paul, without needing to assume a presidential posture, trusting he believed in her dignity enough that she didn't have to wear it around him like a cloak.

Much like her Democrat predecessor, Sara had wanted to focus this first term on domestic issues. It was what she knew with most intimacy and thought of as a priority among what needed changing. Despite traditional American exceptionalism amongst presidents, Sara didn't actually think of herself as the leader of the free world. America alone had voted her into power. By definition, if the world needed changing, she needed to start with this country.

Not that she was going to make it, if every bill got filibustered before it could have a chance to become law.

Reform in America was so desperately urgent, Sara had found herself at a loss where to begin. Reduce the cost and expand access to higher education. Pick up her predecessor's efforts on healthcare and immigration – gather the scraps from the DREAM Act and try and make it into acceptable legislation for a Congress that was half blue, half red.

But the red half wasn't looking to compromise or even keep a show of fair play.

It got her so worked up, Sara would pace the great Master Bedroom at night, her hate for her excessively luxurious surroundings rising in peaks.

"I'm the President of the United States and I can't do anything. I can't _do_ anything."

Demands from the public about Republican strategy led to interviews and a mild effort at hypocrisy. "These things take time. We're considering the matter. Is compromise at all possible? I don't know. Obviously, we still have to think about it – and I would add our young president still has much to learn."

"Right," Sara said, to herself, sometimes to Kellerman, when he happened to be around. "Except they won't meet with me, they won't return my calls. They're actually _ghosting_ me." She wanted to laugh; this was ridiculous. "This isn't Tinder for Christ's sake. I'm not a needy girl looking for a date."

Paul was patient with her. "The more energy you waste on them, the bigger their victory. That's all they're doing, don't you see? Killing time, Sara. They're going to kill as much as they can so that, by 2024, you'll have barely scratched the surface of what needs doing. They'll paralyze you. If we can't work with them, we'll work around them. Better not let them get to you."

Sara's best option was to do damage to the Republicans' image by making them look responsible for the situation in the Senate, and hope that eventually got them to retreat.

But something surprising happened, a few months later, that demanded a change of strategy.

Sara was in the middle of a national security meeting when she received a call from Kellerman, currently in Beijing.

"Paul, I'm glad you could join us. Isn't it something like three a.m. in China?"

His tone made it immediately clear he wasn't in the mood for laughs. "We have a Bagwell problem," he said. Though the simple phrasing could have meant a hundred things ultimately trivial, Sara became earnest immediately – didn't like the sound of her friend's voice right at this second. "Get on the internet and type: 'America Now' Podcast."

"I'm rather busy right now."

Sara cast an ensemble look at her team, lingering a split second on Gretchen Morgan whose cold blue eyes gleamed with interest.

"If I were you," he said, "I'd want to know about this. Call me back when you're ready to work on a counterattack. We're going to have to strike back fast, and we'll have to do it on their ground – you'll know what I mean when you've listened to it."

…

"He's joking, right? He's got to be joking." Lincoln spoke the words to himself, waiting for the "L". He'd taken to listening to the news and information podcasts on his phone to pass the time on his way to work.

Theodore Bagwell had been teasing his upcoming podcast "America Now" for months, and Lincoln had decided to listen to it for the same reasons he paid attention to political chatter at the restaurant.

"With everything that's going on in the world, these days, better be alert."

That was the answer Lincoln gave anyone who asked about his views on politics or what he thought of the latest news coverage.

"Better be alert."

Those simple words, which spared him from revealing himself to his colleagues, were on his mind, all throughout the subway ride that took Lincoln on his way to work, one evening in March. He got through the fifty-nine minutes of Bagwell's podcast, but not without letting out crude commentaries –

"Oh, you're shitting me. No way _in hell_ you aren't shitting me."

Journalist Todd Navuto served as Bagwell's cohost, but it wasn't one of those evenly splitting of the floor for two celebrities of equal weight – it was clear Navuto was only there to ask the questions, so the dullness of his plain voice would heighten the charm of Bagwell's slick southern drawl, like a bland plate of pasta seems to bring out the flavor of elegant savory meals.

Food images were recurrent since Lincoln had taken that job at the restaurant. At times, he surprised and laughed at himself, vowing he'd need to do something about it, but right now, there was a more pressing issue.

"But when you're saying America's a country in crisis," Navuto said, "you mean that on what front? Are we talking about a financial crisis? A crisis in ideology?"

"I mean on _every_ front, Todd, my friend. I mean the cracks have taken such a toll on the sweet surface of our national identity, America is starting to look like a broken mirror. We are no longer as _one_ , Todd, but glass fragments, nothing but distortion and disunity."

Lincoln shook his head, in mild disgust and disbelief. "Anyone can say that," he protested, "anyone!"

A few of the people in the subway aimed suspicious frowns at him. Those standing immediately next to him moved away a couple of steps.

"And what's the cause, do you think? This crisis – what brought it about, and how can we fix it?"

An efficient pause followed Navuto's theatrics-laden question. Lincoln didn't doubt any American who'd ever watched Bagwell on television could picture his Cheshire grin, rising all the way to his ears.

"A simple answer to you, Todd. Everyone who hasn't been living in a cave for the past twenty years knows that America is starting to look _less_ American by the hour."

"Oh no, he didn't," Lincoln sighed.

"Immigration. As simple as that. Like water in a sinking ship, taking the glorious boat all the way down to its blue underworld. Snatching the shine out of this magnificent country, turning the luster of our beaming colors into grey mush."

"That means nothing." Lincoln said. "Words. He's just saying _words_."

"Of course, that's only the beginning. The more rats eat into a piece of cheese, the more holes you're going to get and the less food. That's pure logic. But it's not just that the face of America's changing – no. What really threatens our country with destruction, is that these people have gotten so numerous, stealing proper American jobs from our struggling citizens – they've actually gotten to vote one of _them_ into power."

"And by that you mean –"

"Miss Sara Tancredi, Todd, of course. I mean our current president."

"What?"

As Lincoln was discovering Senator Bagwell's podcast, on the subway ride to work, Sara was making her own opinion – listening while maintaining an audio-only Skype conversation with Kellerman. Right now, she didn't want to see anyone.

"But he can't say that. That's ridiculous. That's –" Sara interrupted herself in the midst of her rambling. What did such protests matter, in an age where 'ridiculous', like a great deal of graver things, had become a mere shell – a mere word?

"That's right," Bagwell sighed earnestly. "I'm afraid I hold it from very reliable sources that Sara Tancredi, Justice Frank's daughter, is in fact a bastard child – and not born in the least on American soil."

"Did he just call me a bastard?"

Sara wanted to laugh. Right now, as if to set up the proper reaction for the rest of the world to follow. As if human beings were like dogs, to be talked of in terms of _breed_ and _pure blood_.

 _Ridiculous_ , she thought again. _He'll get laughed out of the floor_.

But respectable journalist Todd Navuto didn't laugh. "That's a serious accusation you're making, Senator."

"Wish I didn't have to be making it, Todd."

"No," Lincoln said, sharing Sara's outrage all the way from Chicago. "He won't get away with this. He can't."

"There're pictures of my pregnant mother," Sara said. "What is he saying? She lost the child and my dad hooked up with some mystery mistress on foreign soil? That's –"

"Ridiculous," Lincoln echoed Sara's thoughts. " _Ridiculous_."

"Please, Paul, don't tell me you want us to take this seriously."

"My sweet Sara."

The necks in Sara's neck bristled. She didn't know what surprised her most – the sudden absence of formality in his talk, or its genuine sympathy.

"Have a look at Twitter. The podcast's been out for three hours, and we're up to a hundred thousand hashtags. By tonight, we may be talking two or three hundred thousand. Ridiculous is beside the point."

Sara was dismayed to see he was right.

Hashtag NoFakesInTheOval. Hashtag AmericaNow.

Sara sat motionless in the presidential chair, for a while, alone in the oval office where she had just dismissed her team.

Protest rose in her mouth but something stopped it from getting out –

Something that realized the changing relation of this country to reality, and realized protest would not make a difference.

 _Truth_ mattered very little.

Because it had come in the voice of a charming reliable public figure, because hundreds of thousands had been passing on the information, this was a concrete problem, that had been magically weaved into existence but would not so easily be wished out of it.

"All of my efforts to press on the immigration issue, to send ships to rescue all those people drowning at the gates of Europe, to condemn my predecessor's behavior and the leaders who let those people die – all of that will get lost and confused with the unfounded accusation that I'm ineligible for the presidency."

Kellerman gave no answer. Sara hadn't really been talking to him.

"It doesn't matter to him that innocent people are dying. Hard borders are tough, and he wants to make me look soft. To make look _weak_."

"What are you going to do?" Paul asked after a while.

"Gather my communication team and work on a defense. I'm tired of playing nice. We'll fight fire with fire."

…

 **End Notes** : I realize it took me a long time to update! I've had a busy month of September, but I'll try to get back on tracks. I enjoy this story so much. Please let me know your thoughts and reactions as always!


	24. Cooperation

There was no denying Lincoln was nervous as he took the bus to Beverly that morning, where, as far as he knew, his little brother still lived.

Lincoln had never been good with denial.

"If he wants to throw me out, it's his right. I deserve that. We're brothers, but we're also two concerned citizens. Just want to help. That's all. Just –" His pointless mumbling got lost in one deep sigh as he wrapped forehead in his palm.

It was no good.

Of course, he missed him. He felt Michael's absence several times, every day. Things to say to him popped through his mind, like the reflex to try and move your arm when it's been amputated. It made it worse that his loss didn't provoke unmitigated pain. Guilt had built itself into a massive wall he came up against, whenever fond memories of childhood swept through his brain. A huge, black wall that Lincoln could _see_ ; not made of bricks or mortar or any definable material, but _pulsing_ , the curse it whispered in harmony with Lincoln's heartbeat.

 _If I touch it_ , Lincoln thought, _it'll suck me in, and I'll never manage to crawl my way out._

He pictured himself, entangled in the tar-black substance as it walled him in, coaxed him into compliance.

Guilt, melancholy, Lincoln was sure, were things that took hold of you not because of the horrors you'd done, but depending on whether you ceased to resist.

And he could feel its pull, cold and dark, but sweet with the promise of relief. _Give yourself to me, yes, completely… Do you feel the pointlessness of all things that draw you away? You come back to me in the end_. _Sooner or later, I'll have you. We shall both go to the grave like silent friends_.

Lincoln shook his head.

There were still things to do, still _rightness_ to be found in the world.

At the idea, Lincoln thought of the restaurant, and the table by the window that overlooked the whole of Chicago.

A few times since he'd worked here, a woman had sat there, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied, and Lincoln had noticed something about her he hadn't immediately tried to identify – just something that came off _different_ from the Everest's usual clients.

She was always polite to Lincoln and his colleagues, made direct eye-contact when she thanked them or when they took her order. She had very blue eyes, and very black hair, and very white skin. The first few times Lincoln had noticed her, when a different waiter was taking care of her table, and she had merely been another impeccably-dressed in a restaurant full of chic people, he had thought her pretty. But there had been something unsettling, _unexpected_ , about the first time he had really looked at her.

Unprepared for surprises, Lincoln had come in with his usual attitude that customers liked so much. Familiar yet not intrusive. Charming but not flirty.

From the moment her direct blue eyes stared back at him, Lincoln felt immediately, not only her difference, but her strength – few people inspire it so naturally, in such a disarming way. Her face from up close was a near-transparent whiteness, freckled, and more unusual than he had first thought in those unmindful glimpses. A striking blend of honesty and opaqueness. Lincoln was good at reading people, and the signs about this woman were all there for him to see, but popped like soap bubbles when he tried to make them fit into anything concrete.

 _Such depths_ , he thought, when he met the woman's gaze, as if her soul had roots all the way to the center of the earth. _She's not here for show_. Maybe that was the most obvious thing that made her stand apart from the other clients. _She's not here forshow_.

Lincoln tried to shake off the feeling of awe as he took her order, tried to be his cool habitual self, not so much because he thought she would like it but as if to prove himself that he could.

He recommended port wine with today's special but wasn't surprised at her polite smile of dismissal. People here enjoyed being told what to eat or drink by a waiter – it took them out of their comfort zone, actually thrilled them a little, but it was clear this woman knew her own mind.

He'd noticed she came here with a different man every time, when she came accompanied, and Lincoln felt it added to the overall depth of her enigma.

"My clients like this table," she said, when Lincoln made what he felt was an especially trite comment on the view. Her voice made him think of crystal-clear waters, that you can see through, but whose particular cold touch mystifies and enthralls.

As she said this, she turned her face towards the great window, and Lincoln was free for a few seconds to look at her face – to look at someone in a way you can only dare when they don't look back at you. Real admiration is always a unilateral process. Paintings at a museum are there to receive your gaze, not share it, and yet, the moment the young woman met his eyes anew, Lincoln felt like this was the only way to really describe it. A steel, powerful hold over his whole being. A little uncanny. Like a work of art had inexplicably looked back at him.

"Clients?" He repeated.

Felt every word out of his mouth was one already too often spoken, bland food whose savor had long been chewed out of it.

"I think it's the freedom it inspires," she said, touched her lips to the glass of iced water on the table. "This view. It's an easy trick – open sights. The illusory control you get, looking at the world from above. Not that all my clients' freedom is in danger. But if you were going to risk time in prison, this is the sort of sight you'd want to look at as long as you can. Don't you think?"

Lincoln looked silently at her for a while. None of his easy jokes were in order. He felt like a buffoon, and convinced he had never spoken to a woman like her.

"You're a lawyer," he said, finally.

Sounding grave, he noticed, and not only because Michael had said something about his law-oriented horizon the last time Lincoln had been at the apartment, to pick up his things –

 _(A mere excuse to see his brother, maybe – maybe his reason for coming today was an excuse still)_

"Yes," the young woman answered. A flash of black lashes as she lowered his eyes to his name tag. "Mister –"

"Lincoln."

A wave of her strange power washed over him as he gave her his name, not with nonchalance, but like in a fairytale where names matter, were names give other people power on the person who reveal it.

He didn't want to hear her speak his family name.

For one delusive moment, Lincoln wanted to be a man without a family, without a past, without wrongs.

"Veronica," she answered, and he felt the symmetrical magic of their formal introduction, found himself wanting to repeat that name, that sounded like such a sweet slice of enigma in her rainwater voice.

 _Veronica_.

In the bus, on his way to his brother's apartment, Lincoln did speak it out loud, the name he had only dared to play in loops within the confines of his mind.

Somehow, it seemed wrong, seemed to draw him closer to that wall of guilt looking to draw him in, to think of her at this moment.

The woman from the restaurant, whom it had been relatively easy to admire – she belonged in a world where Lincoln was only number-one waiter, a good-looking smile on a face that could pass for ruggedly handsome in its way.

Right now, though, standing in that bus crammed too full of people for them to sit, those smiles with Veronica and occasional exchange of witty comments – they felt like a fool's delusion; a wild dream.

 _John Abruzzi got me in here, among these people, so that I could pretend to like them, to_ be _like them._

But 'pretend' was just the right world.

Lincoln wasn't, in fact, just a fairly good waiter, but an ex-con shamming his way into a new life. His job at the Everest was the wages his criminal work for a potent mobster.

The worst of it was, it had never occurred to Lincoln there'd be cause for confusion. That he might want to forget Lincoln-the-ex-con so he could be Lincoln-the-waiter full time.

Yet again. He hadn't planned for the woman, _Veronica_ , to happen, hadn't expected he'd walk to her table while more or less casual ways to ask her out would play over and over in his mind –

( _By the way, if you're not busy tonight – if you're ever tempted by more down-to-earth views – I thought maybe – I just wondered if by any chance you might_ –)

Whether to pick up a woman or on any other occasion, Lincoln had never stammered before, and didn't intend to go through with any of these sentences until he had mustered them into a coherent whole.

But as the bus stopped and Lincoln got out, and the familiar streets of his brother's neighborhood flashed him by, Lincoln felt sure he would never actually ask that woman out.

 _Anything we could have would only be founded on a lie_.

Either that, or he'd have to tell her, tell her he wasn't only Lincoln-the-ex-con but Lincoln-the-betrayer, the Liar, the Unforgiveable.

A chill passed through Lincoln's frame as he entered his brother's building and started climbing the cold steps. Months, only months, since he'd seen Michael, but it was the longest the two brothers had ever been apart. Even when Lincoln was incarcerated, Michael visited nearly every week, when work allowed it. Lincoln had always felt amused by it – the image of his little brother in such a place as Fox River, with his fancy shirts, his delicate and beautiful face.

 _The things Michael did for love. The things I took for granted_.

What had Lincoln ever done for his brother? What had he ever done for anyone?

Nervousness came and went as Lincoln crushed it out of existence, as he gave a couple of raps on the door.

He had no excuse to be nervous. No one had any excuse to go where they weren't supposed to go then collapse into a pitiable mess, for finding themselves precisely where they had decided.

His composure didn't crack even when Michael swept open the door, and the two brothers faced each other, suddenly –

Yes, it was sudden, after all these months, to see Michael's face, a face he'd known by heart ever since he could remember but that now struck him as a stranger's.

Since the motel room incident, Lincoln had felt the same way whenever he looked into a mirror.

It struck Lincoln he and his brother were like shattered pieces of a same whole, glass fragments that each reflected a broken image, full of cracks and holes.

As if the trauma of Lincoln's betrayal had disunited them from their own identities as well as from each other.

In whatever way each brother had decided to cope – there could be no going back to the way things were. This much was certain.

"Lincoln," Michael said.

No recognizable form of animosity or anger broke free at the word. It used to be easy for Lincoln to read his brother, easier than it had ever been for him to read anything – he might not have been good at guessing what his teachers wanted him to see in a play by Shakespeare, but Lincoln was always able to read right the only thing that mattered.

His little brother.

When he came home from school with a frown, Lincoln would be relentless. _What happened, Mikey? Did someone hurt you? Was it the kid that was looking sideways at you last week, the one with the red shirt?_

It was that simple. Michael never needed – or _meant_ , Lincoln was sure – to rat on anyone. Lincoln only had to read the answers on his silent face, then go have your typical big brotherly chat with whoever had been picking on him, and that was the end of trouble.

How grown his brother looked, Lincoln thought, and that it had taken him this separation to really see Michael had turned into a grown man, sometime between now and puberty.

"Did you want something?" Michael asked.

A little relief kicked in, a small puff of warmth into Lincoln's chest, that Michael didn't greet him with more outright hostility. Yet at the same time, there seemed nothing more humiliating than his brother's implication –

 _Did you want something?_

As if Lincoln were a parasite that had been pumping himself full of Michael's blood, time and money all his life, crawling away when he was replete, going from one slimy mistake to the next.

Lincoln shook himself up a little, as if to resist the pull of that black wall that wanted to draw him into its immortal embrace.

"Yeah, I wanted to give you this."

He took a rolled stack of bank notes from the pocket of his coat and handed him to it; he ought to have put them in an envelope but had never gone around to buying some. As he held his hand towards his brother, into the slit of the open door, Lincoln felt oddly exposed; as if his hand were committing a transgression, penetrating within forbidden territory, and it stood at risk of catching fire, like a vampire inside a church.

Michael looked at the money with puzzled interest, like he might look at an unknown breed of spider, particularly repulsive, maybe poisonous.

"What is that?"

"Rent I never paid you. A few months of it. I can afford it now, so there'll be more coming."

When Michael looked back at him, his eyes glowed with amusement. Though Michael was still partly concealed behind the door, Lincoln could tell he'd grown thinner, and hadn't shaved in a few months. Because Michael's face never grew hairier than an adolescent's, you might not immediately pick up on it, but Lincoln did.

"Are you trying to make us even, Linc?"

"No." With some shock, like what Michael suggested would have been a criminal offense. "Never."

Michael nodded. Though his face was no longer an open book to Lincoln, he could still identify some of what was happening. It would have been easy for Michael to refuse the money, even if he could probably use it – to toss back his brother's attempts at rebuilding the monumental bridge between them he'd himself destroyed, over years and years of bad decisions.

There was mercy in the way Michael accepted the cash and met his brother's eyes; mercy, not forgiveness. Forgiveness was not even the light at the end of Lincoln's tunnel, but an unlit candle in the rain that little short of a miracle could set alight.

But Lincoln could take mercy. After all he'd done, he wasn't above taking anything.

"Well," Michael said. "I'd invite you in, but that'd be a little weird, I think."

"I'm fine where I am."

Really, Lincoln was glad any part of his brother would take the least enjoyment in seeing him – although he knew the love that bound them probably went beyond all degrees of unforgiveable wrongs and evils.

"Well." Lincoln said in turn. Perhaps he was stalling for time, but if Michael wanted him gone, he would tell him; forwardness had never frightened the brothers. "Did you listen to Bagwell's podcast?"

"'America Now'?" Michael nodded. "Doesn't surprise me. Some Republicans still care about their party remaining decent, but those who follow Bagwell – they're all about war. So, of course, they'd drown her in nonsensical conspiracy theories, so she'd look weak, would have to appear on the defensive, and with all the congressional obstructionism they'll heap on her, it'd be a wonder for her to unbury herself soon enough that she can do something meaningful."

Lincoln was silent for a moment. Michael hadn't spoken Sara's name, and it would be wrong for Lincoln to be the one to say it – he hardly dared to pick up the topic, hot and burning, to be handled with much caution, after Michael left it to float freely between them.

"You don't think…" Lincoln said. "That she can make a difference? I mean –"

"I think she's one of the rare people to have lived in the White House who genuinely cares about helping the helpless, Lincoln. But she's not the only one. There've been others before her. In the end," he shrugged, "one good president isn't always enough to move the country forward. Not when the Senate wants to put you down, and about half of the country would sooner go to war than accept the changes."

"So, that leaves nothing for us to do?"

Michael smiled.

The look of it surprised Lincoln so, it was like a warm punch in his chest, sinking through flesh and bone.

"I didn't say that."

For a flashing second, Lincoln was tempted go glance past his brother's shoulder and try to see if anything special hid behind that ajar door.

"There are other ways," he said, "other places to be than the spotlight. When that's where you are, and you want to make a real change – naturally, you get all the opposition. But that's enough about politics," Michael said, when his brother was going to ask for details. "What about you? How's life treating you, Lincoln?"

Despite the new coldness to his voice, Lincoln identified no cruel irony or disdain. Their relation certainly _had_ changed – but Michael handled it as honestly and with as little anger as possible. Not to forgive someone was one thing, completely different from letting anger eat you up. Lincoln was glad his brother had taken the right course.

Lincoln shrugged. "I work at the Everest now."

"How's that doing for you?"

"Not bad. I make a lot of money. The people I work with are only medium assholes, and some of them aren't assholes at all. Yesterday, I got to meet Shonda Rhimes."

"Well, good for you."

Lincoln sensed as the end got closer, and decided he wanted to put in something more honest before he had to leave – something that might give his brother a real reason to want to see him.

"I'm working on something, too. A project." As Michael didn't prod him for details, Lincoln pursued. "Every night, I find a fancy restaurant isn't a bad place to learn about what very rich people think and do. I get politicians, you know. Not just Hollywood celebrities. I take notes of everything I hear. Thought you might be interested in having a look."

Michael was silent.

Maybe accepting money was easier than to allow his brother into his big scheme, which was still fresh and all his to nurture.

For whatever reason – maybe only his brother's persisting silence – Lincoln heard himself add, "I met a lawyer."

A tremor of remorse went over Lincoln's frame; it took him a lot of effort to keep himself from a visible shudder. Why would he bring Veronica into this, when he didn't even dare talk to her about going on a date?

But the different spheres of Lincoln's life were collapsing together as if the watery barriers between them had never stood a chance to keep them separate.

All the same, Michael seemed nonplussed. "I meet lawyers all the time."

"I mean a lawyer who takes on big clients. Clients who make the national news."

"And you want to introduce us?"

"Well, I don't –" Lincoln stopped himself short. "Eventually."

The wait seemed an eternity as Michael's eyes gauged his brother's face, with that same mercy that bore no resemblance to forgiveness.

"You don't have to do this, Linc." Michael said. "Do all those things, I mean, to make amends."

Lincoln's tone was equally grave. "What else can I do?" He said. "I want to help, Michael. If you're trying to catch some of these guys red-handed, I actually might be able to."

"You trying to do right by me, Linc? Or by your country?"

"Maybe both."

Michael considered this. To start what would amount to a business relation with a brother whose betrayal nearly destroyed you wasn't something you decided on without heavy consideration.

"I hear things," Lincoln said, was aware he sounded like someone desperate pleading for his case. "At the restaurant. There, people don't even pay attention to you. They live in their tiny world, at their table, so much above your paygrade they forget you even speak the same tongue. I hear things," he repeated.

"And you write them down."

Michael waited for a moment. His eyes went over his brother from head to foot. Maybe it was only to admire his uncharacteristically decent clothes. But Lincoln didn't think so. He thought (or maybe hoped) that his brother was getting to know him again. To start afresh with someone, when you've done them that much wrong – it's a lot like trying to befriend a stranger who's got all the right reasons not to trust you, and none to give you a chance.

 _But please, give me a chance, Michael_. _I can change_. _I can be of use_.

"The book," Michael said finally. "You have it on you?"

Lincoln couldn't resist a smile, as he grabbed a fold of his jacket to open it wide and discover the notebook that protruded from an inner pocket.

After some few seconds of thought, Michael took a step back and opened the door of his apartment in response.

Behind his shoulder, in the living room, Lincoln's jaw slackened at the sight of the spider web, where his brother had connected the highest-ranking people in Washington.

There was enough mirth left in him that Michael met his brother's smile halfway as he said, "All right then. Let's get started."

...

 **AN** : Again, I'm sorry this took a little longer than usual. 'I've been busy' would be an understatement ;) I'm actually preparing a competitive exam this year and spending A LOT of time on studies. Please let me know your thoughts and reactions! Hope to see you soon with a new update :)


	25. Times of Change

Sara had her father on the phone, following what soon became known in popular media as the birther revival. Talking to her father was to Sara like the absurdity of eating _foie gras_ for the holidays: no sense in force-feeding a miserable goose until her liver became an overly rich delicacy, but it's Christmas, so tradition bounds you to do it.

Of course, her father was quick to suggest, not how Sara should deal with this crisis, but pointed out instead what she _should have done_ to avoid it, and why all her efforts were now pretty much doomed to failure.

Typical.

Frank Tancredi had wanted the White House too much in his own lifetime that he could stand to be a fair loser to his own daughter.

"I warned you, Sara. You keep a slack hand on your enemies, that's what you get. Even in war, you have to get your opponent to respect you."

Sara didn't say the reason why people like Bagwell would never respect her had nothing whatever to do with anything she might have said or done.

 _I'm a young woman, sitting in the highest office in the land_.

Some would never agree with that image of power, would sooner make it look like she had none. And it was frustrating enough to realize the extent to which they could paralyze her –

If they took lawmaking away from her, even if she could use executive action to get things done – they would be things that could easily be changed by her successor.

Considering what had followed Obama, she'd sooner not give thought to what would follow her.

"With all due respect, dad," Sara said, "I get all the advice I need from my team."

Condescension crackled in her father's laughter. Of all the people who had never been able to _see_ power in her, she knew him to be among the first.

 _And part of him hates me for being where he never managed to get himself_. In his own days, her father had run for President twice, losing to George Bush senior then to Bob Dole in 1996. Still, he'd never manage to admit to himself that Sara wielded more power now than he could ever contemplate –

 _To his mind, his governorship is worth ten of my presidencies._

But that was all right. It had been a long time since Sara had stopped trying to prove herself to him. Some struggles are a sheer waste of energy, and the sooner you stop engaging in them, the better off you are.

At this stage, Sara tolerated her relationship with her father out of necessity. Having none at all wasn't exactly an option: if she cut him off, it would come up during an interview, and she would know better than be mysterious. Explaining the break to a presenter would be just as bad as explaining the nature of the problem to her father. It'd be like having an actually honest conversation with him, mediated by a television screen. Better to endure this once every six months then to try and address their many issues. She only called her father on Christmas – they always acknowledged each other's birthdays through polite postcards – and he only called when some particular crisis demanded it.

Their road to each other was the sort that you can never drive across because it's always under construction, impracticable.

Sara had no interest in going through any particular effort to cross it. Her father's road was on the decline, anyhow. If hers was progress, whatever attempts she made to draw her father along would be vain, and a massive expense of energy she didn't care to waste.

As her father continued his little exposé whose aim was to subtly point out every reason why she was wrong for this office, Sara caught herself thinking about Michael, who wouldn't turn his back on a brother who'd put him through hell and back, who would do anything for family –

But Sara had never managed to feel guilty about the coldness she felt for her own father. He and all those like him, those looking backwards, were like prim old men on a sinking ship, who would sooner sip their brandy than give swimming a chance and change their way of life.

"Un-American," Frank Tancredi sighed contemplatively. "There are few worse things that a commander in chief can be. Consider our last president – clownish, some called him, but that didn't stop him from inspiring _prestige_. And American, he certainly was. That's how I'd handle this, Sara – stay on the safe side, for once in your life. If anyone in this country went along with the idea that you're half-Russian, and not my half, either, it's that your politics are too leftist for this nation."

Sara had learned to sigh a few inches below the micro on her phone, so her father wouldn't catch it. To argue with him had never seemed more pointless. Sara knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, her father would have been the sort of president whose top priority was showing he _owned_ the office, rather than a deep commitment to do right by it. Because he viewed the nation as something frozen, solid, it was only natural he would think of change as a threat.

A great deal of evils had long been tolerated, not least because they were _American_. Slavery, for one. Sara's duty was not to those to whom the system ensured a decent middle-class life, those who were fine with things as they were, and whose dread of progress knew no more frightful match than death.

When she had taken office, in her inaugural address, Sara had pledged she would stand for those the system generally disregarded. _This time, everybody gets a voice. Everybody_.

But this was all on a level of reality Frank Tancredi most likely couldn't grasp.

"Well," she volunteered, with little enthusiasm, "maybe they just like to think of you hooking up with a Russian mistress."

"Humor, Sara? At this time?"

Sara smiled, like those who smile at a funeral.

 _Even now, he's still convinced his career is more important than mine. What matters is how my presidency will reflect on his good name._

But all of the people who changed the world for the better had to put off with a bad name before they could earn a lasting one.

"Sorry, dad. I have an appointment at ten o'clock."

"If it's Paul, give him my regards."

"Of course."

But Sara's ten o'clock wasn't Kellerman. It was, in fact, the beginning of a series of interviews that marked her first official counterattack move. The oval was a good choice of setting for an interview, at such a time: a reminder of the power of the president as well as her legitimacy. But it was on Stephen Colbert's platform that she gave her most radical denunciation of Senator Bagwell's despicable methods.

"Of course, Bagwell's birther revival isn't really about my being Russian, or my ever having stepped foot in Russia," Sara told Stephen, whose face had turned earnest – she liked that presenter not least because he knew when to crack a joke, and when not to. "It's about my being inacceptable for the presidency, because I'm a woman. When you're in the world of politics, you get used to receiving sexism under a layer of polish. It's not difficult telling what an accusation's really about."

"You believe Senator Bagwell is sexist?"

"I think he perfectly embodies modern misogyny."

Stephen didn't look shocked or try to temper her statement. With eyes that meant business, he looked at her, and allowed her space to finish.

"Bagwell may have gotten hundreds of thousands raging for my birth certificate, I don't believe he cares for a second where I was born. This is about wasting my time. About me, talking about this with you, when we could be talking about things that matter – like the seventy-five cents a woman earns for every male dollar. The undeniable racism that plagues our criminal justice system. The economic inequalities that have so drastically increased over the past twenty years, it'd be shameful to hear the numbers spoken out loud."

Sara shrugged. Was very aware of every muscle she moved, could feel the room holding its breath, while her host struggled for casualness.

"Instead of passing legislation on such issues, it's better I defend my legitimacy to occupy this office. Never mind that I was placed there by the popular vote, unlike Donald Trump and George Bush Junior – because they looked the part, they didn't have to fight for it. Well, I tell you, Stephen, I'm about done with this way of doing things. If people would sooner call me a secret communist than realize that our current capitalist system is broken, and millions of American people are paying the cost for it – then that's their business, isn't it?"

Sara paused. Her mouth was dry and wanted water, but this was no time to have it.

"What do you think would be the appropriate thing to do, then?" Stephen asked.

"The only thing I can do. It can't go on, this dancing around with the Republicans. From 2009, the use of the filibuster got out of control, and it doesn't look like it's going to get any better during my time in office. So," she went on, clear as day, "I think it's time the people of this nation ask themselves whether we still have need for a political device that does nothing but hinder our lawmaking process."

"Are you talking about getting _rid_ of the filibuster?"

Of course she wasn't. She would have looked all the more tyrannical, and all the more Russian for it.

"I'm asking _you_ to talk about it," she said. "In three weeks' time, I'm going to hold a national referendum and ask the people whether they would prefer a political system without the filibuster – it's been in every conversation we've had about politics for years, anyway. What I'm in favor of, is the sort of democracy our forefathers first wrote into law – an executive balanced by a Congress, that'll vote on new laws, but that will not _stop_ that vote from happening. That's just standing in the way of change, Stephen. But the world is changing, and maybe even our country needs to recognize this and change along with it. That being said, when I've heard the people's voice on this, I'll stand by their vote, whichever way it takes us. That's how I think a democracy should be run – and it's time we start acting like one."

Paul was waiting for her in the beast – the presidential limousine, which Sara wouldn't have seen fit to call any other way – which would take her back to the airport.

"You're going to get some backlash," he said, like she needed any warning.

"Naturally."

But at least, she would leave a lasting mark on politics –

At this point, Sara couldn't imagine anything worse than her term coming to an end, these four years flashing her by in the blink of an eye, while she had stood helpless, blocked by the Senate, reduced to impotence.

She had meant what she told Stephen. The only voice she cared about, when it came to the decision, was the people's. In a democracy, all authority should ultimately yield to that voice – even her own, and even senators'. Without the filibuster, Sara was confident she could get even a Republican senate to approve of her legislation, if only because the reverse would make them look unprogressive and undemocratic. In truth, Bagwell's followers in the senate represented but a minority, though large enough to be harmful and greatly influential beyond the senate walls.

If the reform actually took place, then she could carry the hope of passing forward-looking laws, sensitive to the plight of minorities. Though _all_ of them wouldn't pass, they would at least get the chance to be voted, to get past Bagwell's extremist branch.

Over the past few months, Sara had managed to make contact with a number of Republicans who began to dissociate from their leader's controversial position. "I'm a Republican at heart," Senator Henry Pope told her, as he sat in her office, after agreeing to meet with her. "My family's voted for the GOP for generations, and I've always held true to its core values. But what we've been getting, since 2016…" Shaking his head. "I don't see what hope we have for the future, if we don't mean to turn into a Republic of fools, apart from adopting a separatist position."

Pope happened to speak the mind of quite a few Republicans, senators or otherwise, who reluctantly agreed to meet with Sara when her team reached out to them.

"I understand your concerns," she told Pope and others like him. "Unity matters, at all times, and in times like these especially. But unity _is_ what I'm aiming for, Senator. Unity beyond partisan allegiance. Unity beyond the imagined barriers of race or gender."

Many of them agreed with her.

Though it would be easy to look at what had happened through recent years in terms of partisan lines, Sara knew better than to paint the Republicans as the scourge of current politics. Throughout the world, the matter was a question of fear and extreme measures, a crisis in democracy, faith of all kind, and individual freedoms.

"Soon enough," Sara thought, "the limits of the earth's resources are going to slap us in the face. We're going to feel it. When that happens, we're going to be headed towards even more division, because people will want to survive, will want to take more than their share, at the expense of others. Isn't that what we've been hearing, the message so many people have been inclined to listen to – America First?"

Alliances mattered, now maybe more than ever.

The evening after her interview in New York, Sara listened to a new podcast by Senator Bagwell – his chilling laughter stiffening the hairs in the back of her neck.

"Abolish the filibuster, hey? Let her go right ahead, then. Let her _try_. We've got measures of our own up our sleeves, don't we? But let's hear the people's vote. Maybe a majority will be in favor – maybe even by a decent margin. Sixty-to-forty. How does that sound, America? But then you don't have to worry, to wonder what will happen to those remaining forty percent. _We_ 'll be there for them. We'll show them the way. After all, forty percent's a lot of people, no? We're talking hundreds of millions. Never mind about putting up a strong opposition." Bagwell chuckled. Sara could see his grin behind her close eyelids. "It's enough people to start a nation."

…

 **End Notes** : Sorry this took so long. Please share your thoughts and thank you thank you for your amazing support!


	26. The Thirty-Nine Percent

The margin turned out to be uncomfortably close to the one predicted by Senator Bagwell, thirty-nine to sixty-one. Thirty-nine percent. The voice of Bagwell, so confident behind his mike, still echoed inside Sara's head. That was nearly a hundred and thirty _million_ people, who opposed the reform.

"Sixty-one percent's a great result," Paul said.

To which Sara replied, "You listen to 'America Now', right?"

"Yes, and I know when to recognize sheer bluff when I hear it, Sara. What's Bagwell going to do? Gather all the Americans who voted no on the filibuster, start calling them the New Confederation of America? They weren't all southern-based, you know. Some of them, but not all. They're too scattered to found a new sense of community." Kellerman chuckled. "And I considered many risks, Sara, when I vowed to see you through this presidency, but none of them featured a second civil war."

For some reason though, this didn't erase the nagging doubt in Sara's mind. Small, but lodged firmly into the walls of her brain, like a black spider spinning nasty threads.

 _Enough people to start a nation_.

The words played, over and again, until she could put her finger on what bothered her so much about them –

 _He spoke it like he meant it_.

In her head, Sara reviewed every piece of information she had stored about Bagwell during the campaign – his charm, his arrogance, and the real motive for his running. Most of those who aspired to be presidents did it because they wanted power, of course, which Bagwell undeniably did; but you can want power for different reasons, and it was clear what Theodore Bagwell wanted before all was to be adored. Ronald Reagan must have been among his favorites – movie star as well as president.

Sara had always been very good at reading people, which wasn't as much an asset in politics as you would think. Holding the keys to someone's inner motives didn't mean you could actually stop them.

In every smile Bagwell made, in every twinkle and wink and popular statement, Sara could hear it clear as day.

 _Love me_ , it said.

 _Lovemelovemelovemeloveme_.

What was she afraid of but to hear America answer –

 _We love you_. _Get us rid of all those job-stealing immigrants, those leftist people in government, give us back the shine and glory of the America of lore, and oh, we'll worship at your altar_.

Would they?

God, Sara wished she could talk to Michael about this. Though they seldom used to talk about her work, and part of her had resented that he would talk so much about it the last time they'd spoken over the phone, now, it felt like it would greatly reassure her – purely to hear a rational voice on the matter.

They would have talked about the undying trends of history, how there had always been those who fought not for justice or equality but for an all-white American nation. Radicalization was but a logical response to the immense demographic changes that had taken place – and that would only increase – in recent decades.

For all her instinct was worth, Sara had been unable to predict how precious it would be to have a sensible ally to talk to – not just someone who understood her issues, but who felt as deeply about them as she did.

Not that it would have changed anything, of course. Michael could never have made it to the White House – he belonged in the shadows, he had told her from the start.

As Sara had expected, the referendum on the filibuster had turned out as a revealer for other things. Asking, _Should I get rid of the filibuster?_ was really another way of asking, _Are you with me?_ This was, anyhow, how voters had interpreted it.

"They won't vote in favor of abolishing the filibuster if they don't want my government's legislation," Sara had thought, quite logically.

And, by now, to the people as well as Congress, there was little mystery as to the sort of measures Sara's administration would promote.

Facilitating the journey towards American citizenship for refugees, as well as stalling the system of mass deportations of illegal immigrants who had resided on the land for years.

More affordable college education. Yet more affordable healthcare.

An expansion of the Food Stamps program, based on saving the millions of tons of food that was laid to waste by big industries, because Sara couldn't well live with the fact that people still starved in one of the richest countries on earth.

"So," Kellerman told Sara, the morning the results of the referendum were announced, "we're going forward with this?"

"Executive action for this will be too fragile," Sara said. "Anyone that comes after me can just put it back. I want this signed into law."

In the speech Sara gave, that very day, she began by talking about historical precedents. That she knew all too well that very often, Washington resisted change, even when the people clamored for it. "I've heard the people's voice today," she said, "and I won't stand in its way. But I think it's important all of us keep in mind we're not talking about doing anything so radical here. Back in the 1890s, the House of Representatives got rid of its filibuster, because it was getting in the way of politics. The filibuster wasn't enshrined in our Constitution by our forefathers. Rather, it was added so as to make our lawmaking process more convenient – today, few in this country could argue that it's become an inconvenience. And I'd say it's high time we repeal it, in the name of progress."

The following week, Sara issued an order effectively suspending the Senate's use of filibuster. She would hear the House's opinion on it, and then the Senate's, before they would hopefully come to a bipartisan vote that would sign the reform into law.

"You'll make enemies," Kellerman had warned her.

"I've _already_ made enemies."

Kellerman hadn't insisted but smiled, a smile that was no less ambivalent than the one she got from Gretchen Morgan, when she had her in her office the next day.

"I know it's a little off topic for me to say so," Gretchen said, "but I wanted you to know I think it's brilliant. To finally see a president who's interested in moving things forward."

Sara took this with a mere nod – was still uncertain how to feel about Gretchen Morgan's attitude. To dismiss her as a mere flatterer would be a foolish mistake, and yet there was a deeper layer to her compliments, a backdrop that Sara couldn't satisfactorily identify.

Back in Chicago, Michael received the news with what Lincoln deemed to be insufficient enthusiasm. "This is great," Lincoln said. "If she can really bring the Democrats and the Republicans together – well, for starters, she'll be the first twenty-first century president to manage _that_."

"Never thought you paid such attention to politics, Linc," Michael answered evasively.

"I've been catching up."

It wasn't the first time that Lincoln returned to Michael's apartment, after his brother had agreed to receive his help on some matters. Most of their cooperation went through the more modern means of communication – texts rather than phone calls – it was probably more convenient for Michael to handle his brother with as much distance as possible.

Whatever anger or disgust Michael might feel for him, Lincoln never felt it so much as graze the surface. The first time Michael had let him in, after Lincoln had offered his help, he remembered how it was like a great gulf opened up inside his chest – only not the wrong kind. This void, yet unbridgeable emptiness, was full of possibilities, of things that might _become_.

"Wow," Lincoln had said, as he took a look around Michael's apartment, which seemed but the carcass of its former glory. "It's worse than mine!"

There'd been something nearly like a smile on Michael's face – tolerance – as good a beginning as Lincoln could hope to get.

What had really impressed him, of course, was the spider-web that took up most of Michael's living room wall.

"Well I'll be damned."

It had never crossed Lincoln's mind before to put together the faces of every important actor in Washington – and no doubt in the rest of the country, considering the size of Michael's web. The pinned pictures and black threads – that signified relations? Economic ties? – not only took up the wall in its entirety, but spread to the adjacent ones, so that Lincoln knew Michael might put every square meter of this apartment to use. Amidst the photographs, papers, ranging from Post-It notes to regular-sized paper, scribbled with ink front and back, but Lincoln didn't dare get close enough to try and read them.

Really, he remained at a somewhat awed distance from the web, as if it were a fantastic creature he was afraid to offend.

"Well?" Michael had wanted to know. "Any of these faces familiar from the restaurant?"

The question drilled Lincoln's brain back into professional focus.

"Actually, they do."

Without thinking, Lincoln bridged in a few steps the distance that separated him from the web, until he was close enough to touch the picture of a dark-haired fellow, whose blue eyes stared eerily at you from the paper.

"This guy?"

"Alex Mahone?" Michael sounded interested, arms crossed over his chest. "So far, I've got nothing on him. Nothing bad. He's been in the Senate only for a couple of years. Always voted soundly, I should think. Wasn't afraid to stand up to his own party when Trump pushed him to it. I respect the guy. Thought it meant he was following his own sense of justice rather than blindly abiding by partisanship."

"Oh, he's following his own path all right. He's been to the restaurant four times – having dinner with Philly Falzone."

Michael shrugged.

"That's one of Abruzzi's guys, Mike." Lincoln looked back at the photograph, where the man put on a killer smile. "He works for the mob."

The whole afternoon had gone down like this. Lincoln would pour knowledge on every face he could recognize on Michael's wall. When it was getting dark, and Michael checked his watch, Lincoln had inquired, "Should I get going?"

"I have a phone call scheduled at eight."

"Ah. Some lawyer?"

"A frightfully bad one. But he's accepted to take my advice for free – his client's a good kid, but they're trying to get him in max for grand theft." Michael shrugged. "It's not going to resonate in Washington, helping that kid – but not everything has to. The small scale must still matter. Right?"

Lincoln nodded. Then, returning to the photographed faces, and trying not to look at Sara's, "You know, I've got pages and pages of info on some of these guys, if you have time for some reading."

"Sure. You can bring them back sometime next week."

Lincoln tried to ignore the wave of warmth that spread over his chest at the thought. "Well, I'd like to copy them first. The handwriting's pretty bad –"

"No worse than the high school homework I used to check for you. I can still read you, Linc."

Though Michael didn't smile, his voice was pleasant with the remembrance of dear memories, and Lincoln thought his last statement was true in more ways than one.

Though their cooperation was by no means the continuation of their old relationship, it was a good enough opportunity to start a new one. Of course, things couldn't be, were never going to be as they were. When Lincoln was at Michael's apartment, and they exchanged about famous and lesser-known influential actors on the stage of Washington, the enormity of Lincoln's betrayal was never quite forgotten. The was no need for either brother to point to it, either in the shape of awkward repentance or bitter reproach. Most of the time, it just sat there between them, in each moment of silence or pause, the self-conscious elephant in the room – only it was more like an enormous spider, hanging from the ceiling, black and ominous over the brothers' heads, who were enmeshed as ever in its web, but who found it preferable not to acknowledge it. Who ever wants to acknowledge something as repulsive and loathsome as the spider in the bathtub, or on the ceiling right above the bed?

What for?

They couldn't kill it.

The monster was born out of Lincoln's mistake and he was one time-machine short to try and undo it.

And yet he enjoyed this.

Most of it.

The time he spent with Michael was precious, not only because he was near his brother, whom he loved, and whom by any standard, he had never truly deserved.

Lincoln enjoyed working with him, because this was likely the most meaningful thing he would ever do. At least that he'd ever _done_.

What was more, he didn't think he could have been so good at his job at the Everest, could have even found it in himself to keep it, if he hadn't been using it to get intel on big-shot clients on the side.

 _That's just what I am, maybe. A sneaky bastard. Not a straight bone in my body_.

But that didn't really matter to Lincoln. Not when he heard about Sara's plan for reform on television, not when he sat on the floor of his brother's apartment, filling sheets of paper with everything he could remember about this or that congressman, while Michael incorporated a several-hundred-page book on criminal justice – not when he thought the world might finally be changing.

"You're going to tell me you're not excited?"

"Getting rid of the filibuster's one thing, Linc – winning over even a half-Democrat Congress to pass unprecedented progressive legislation is quite another."

Lincoln digested this. In the time before, he would have made some joking comment about how his little brother had gotten so cynical – but this was part of the liberties he'd lost last Halloween night at the motel. Probably, that had played a major role in Michael's cynicism. He didn't dare tell him he might have a little faith.

"You know what?" Lincoln said instead. "I think she'll do it though."

"Do what exactly?"

"Pass her reform laws. Change the country for the better. Go down in history."

"For sure," Michael answered, without raising his eyes from the pages.

But Lincoln had a feeling his brother was only replying to the last part of his statement.

And, of course, going down in history could be done in more ways than one. For the best as well as for the worse.

…

 **End Notes** : Still having a great time with this story. Please share your thoughts and reactions, and thanks again for your support which means the world to me.


	27. Fairydust

In Washington DC, Senator Bagwell followed Sara's announcement only with half an eye, as he busied himself with the task of tying his tie. This activity didn't generally require so much attention, but Theodore Bagwell was a sore loser, and got some vindictive pleasure out of granting only divided interest to the young president's media presence. It was like ignoring a former friend when you ran into each other in the streets, or pretending you weren't afraid when the lights in your house suddenly went out. You might only be fooling yourself, and imperfectly at that, it's better than meeting your own weaknesses in the eye.

And so, Bagwell sprinkled Sara's speech with condescending chuckles and scoffs, and gave no more than occasional glances towards the screen.

Unlike what John Abruzzi thought, Bagwell wasn't by any means a stupid man.

You had some of those in the world of politics, whom circumstances had somehow carried to the top as the result of no striking talent on their part, but Bagwell wasn't one of them, and there was more cunning behind his easy smile than meets the eye.

That being said, he like all men suffered limitations, and his were in large part determined by prejudice.

Those had been firmly ingrained by his father, whom he'd seen little of as a boy and still less when he was of age. To young Bagwell, 'daddy' had been a hand to tousle his hair when they passed each other in the house, a charming and ever-smiling presence at the dining table, once or twice a week. Theodore Bagwell Senior was a man of the crowd, dined out more often than not, was more interested in adults than in children in general, and that Theodore happened to be his own had made little difference. Nevertheless, it had been enough for his father's view of the world on many things to permeate Bagwell's perception – and where his father was found wanting, there were the conversations he picked up anywhere in town, from supermarkets to restaurants, even to school. _That nonsense business about women's liberation and giving niggers the vote_ , _can you believe it? Madness. Them big shots think they're so clever putting together kinds that don't mix, where's it gonna get us? They better be careful, I tell you. Better be careful._

Of course, there had been occasions for Bagwell to question the principles he had absorbed rather than adopted, but over the years, he had always found it more comfortable not to.

Once, when he was in his early twenties, he'd been out with friends at some park past sunset, only a little drunk, when a young brown-skinned girl had walked past them, with her head lowered, shoulders high, like barricades. They'd teased and whistled and asked where she was going. Not because they really meant her harm. But she was so ready for it, so clearly _expecting_ them to, it was just the natural thing to do. Her vulnerability invited it. Her large, dark eyes that were determined _not_ to see them, not to acknowledge their existence and inherent superiority, were in themselves defiant.

The girl got away nearly free of charge. They fell in on her, hustled her a little, and she dropped her small, round satchel bag on the ground. This was nothing to Bagwell, nothing at all. They didn't hurt the girl, who seemed to dissolve from the circle they formed, and she kept going, without her satchel, drowned into the nightly landscape while they laughed and howled after her.

But for a flashing second before she was gone, Bagwell saw the look on her face, which was part fear – the raw, primal fear you'll see on humans as well as animals – but also humiliation. The unbearable humiliation of having the pride you were born with dragged in the mud.

 _This girl feels the same pride that I do_.

The thought entered Bagwell's mind with the force of undeniable logic. But though it might have shattered the foundations on which he'd built his view of the world, it only pierced through, noiseless and painless, and Bagwell was careful to build over the small hole so the frontiers of his mental universe appeared brand-new.

Just as prejudice had prevented him from sympathizing with this girl or put her suffering on the same level as his own, it stopped Bagwell from viewing Sara Tancredi as his equal, let alone his superior.

Because he was naturally a better political player than her, it went without saying that her victory over him was spurious and shameful. The presidency was his by right – an important part, and the _greater_ part, of America still followed him – which meant that it was only just he should use any means necessary to obtain it.

"Any means necessary."

Bagwell liked the look on reporters' face when he said this.

Shocked, naturally, but not as shocked as they would have been a few years ago – not willing to cut to commercials and have him thrown off the set.

A slight, slight smile at the corner of their lips.

"Surely, when you say any means necessary –"

"I mean just that. Any means necessary."

Some ten years ago, a decent politician couldn't have gotten away with that, but there'd been such a revolution in people's standards – now, it was a little more unclear just where the line was.

Would you cross it?

Would you be booed or cheered on for it?

And if you crossed the line enough times and got away scots free, just how long until the line stopped existing at all?

Oh, this was a new crowd of voters out there. A crowd afraid for the future and the integrity of their dear nation. It was _they_ who decided what was unacceptable. Not journalists. Not prefixed rules.

In this fine twenty-first century, objective truth had been lowered to the scale of just another opinion.

"Why not?" Bagwell said, "These are the means Sara Tancredi will use, to dismantle the dear principles that hold this nation together. I say, it's only fair we meet her halfway – use the same means to stop her."

"But surely you're aware your words can be misunderstood. Pushed to extreme, some people could be getting the idea that you're condoning violence."

"Ah, Todd, violence is a foul thing, it is. But when I look at America…" He shook his head for the camera. "When I get on my knees to pray at night, and I think of the past four centuries when our country was a city upon a hill, a beacon of light for others to look up to… When I think of the hundreds of thousands that will die because they can no longer follow us as an example, I wonder if there aren't fouler things even."

Theodore kept his eyes down for some time, gathering effect for his next statement.

"A lot of Republicans have been voicing their disagreement with what you're preaching," the journalist pointed out.

"Indeed they have, Todd. Indeed they have. But you know, I've been getting messages by the thousands that come from people who don't identify as Republicans anymore – or as democrats, for that matter. The game is changing here, we're all aware of that. It only makes sense that the stage for it should change as well. This is my way of saying that, in 2024, when America elects its next president, I won't be running as a Republican candidate."

An assembly of round-mouthed whispers washed over the audience.

Most surprising was the confidence in Bagwell's eyes – that he looked the farthest thing from a foolish man throwing his career away.

"Are you saying you'll run as an independent?"

"I'm saying in the next four years, I'll be working on creating a _new_ party, Todd. Because only change can be proper to meet this unprecedented crisis. We've gone beyond the stage when we could look to the past for solutions. Myself, and my people – _we_ are the solution. And if they will just follow my lead in this awful mess, I know for a fact that America can rise more glorious than ever before from the ashes of our past shine. You just wait and see. Wait and see," he said, with his Cheshire smile.

…

It was May 2021, by the time Bagwell made his announcement. Kellerman was more optimistic about it than Sara was. "That's it," he said. "He's just shot himself in both feet. He's done, Sara. We don't have to think about him any longer."

The president pinched her lips. "I don't know. We thought we didn't have to worry about Donald Trump."

"This is different," Kellerman's smile ensured he believed what he said at a hundred percent. "Sara," he resumed, "only two things are for certain in the United States. That'd be capitalism and the bipartite system. The people will never think seriously of a candidate who's not a Democrat or a Republican. Never."

All the way back in Chicago, John Abruzzi's reaction to the news indicated he shared Kellerman's view. "He's sorta going against your orders, isn't he?"

"Sorta." Abruzzi agreed, over a glass of wine with one of his associates.

"Want me to pay him a little visit? Send a message?"

"Nah, he won't get anywhere without one of the two great parties backing him up."

Besides, Abruzzi had faith in his new guy – Republican Alex Mahone had proved himself prolific in everything Bagwell lacked. Self-control. Finesse.

"Just let him talk," Abruzzi said. "That's all it is, anyway – _talk_." He tore the last word into two syllables.

Michael and Lincoln, from their respective apartments, reacted to the news predominantly with a bitter relief – neither of them liked Bagwell, to put it nicely, and both would be glad to see him out of politics.

Basically anyone serious in Washington, at that stage, including everyone in Sara's team of advisors, believed that would be the end of Bagwell's career.

So, surely, that nagging voice in Sara's head was pure madness.

He's got something up his sleeve. _Once again, the nation will be baffled and outraged and repentant_ –

How many people had gone to Hillary Clinton, after the 2016 election, and apologized for not voting?

 _But we didn't believe that couldn't happen. We just didn't believe it could really happen_.

"What about now?" She wondered. "Am I being over-suspicious? Or am I the only one to sense that something very, very wrong is about to happen all over again?"

Of all the people Sara saw that week, the only person who seemed to share her grinding concern was, surprisingly enough, Gretchen Morgan.

She had her in her office to discuss making a public announcement concerning the decrease of surveillance state methods.

They were just about done, and Gretchen was turning to leave, when she spotted Bagwell's face on the front page of The New York Times, lying on a shelf by the door.

"You heard he's picked a name for his party, right?"

Sara arched both brows. "When?"

"Came in this morning, in one of his podcasts."

"You listen to them."

Gretchen smiled. Not one robed in flattery, or any sweetening disguise. "So do you," she said.

Sara realized she wanted to smile back. "Well, what of it?"

"The Knights," Gretchen quoted.

The air stayed trapped in Sara's mouth for a few seconds before it got out in a half-mouthed chuckle. "That's a little too much K for any group in America, isn't it?"

"Either he's an idiot," Gretchen said, "or he knows his electorate"

"Or both," Sara answered with tragic seriousness.

The two women stared at each other for a moment.

"You know, I didn't vote for you, Madam President," Gretchen announced unashamedly. Sara didn't think it relevant to feign surprise. "It's a matter of tradition, you know. At least it used to be. We just vote Republican in the family – that's what it is. Old values. I didn't vote for Donald Trump – but then, I was abroad. It made things easier. What I'm trying to say, I suppose, is that if Bagwell runs again, as an independent, or a Knight, whatever he wants to call himself – I won't vote for him again. He is right about one thing. The face of politics is changing. Republicanism isn't Ronald Reagan anymore – it certainly isn't Abraham Lincoln."

"Soon enough," Sara answered, "it could be Alex Mahone."

He'd been elected at the head of the GOP following Bagwell's resignation.

Gretchen shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe I'll vote for you anyway. Maybe I like what you're doing with our Republic."

"Maybe." Sara said.

She wasn't sure she would ever get an absolute truth out of Gretchen Morgan.

It didn't really matter to her, either, whether or not the woman voted for her. All she wanted for sure out of this woman was that she knew better than to double-cross her.

"So, I don't suppose you agree with my advisors," Sara said. "That Bagwell's nothing to be worried about."

"Surely, you've got more pressing issues on your plate." Gretchen raised her shoulders. "Building a new voter base, building trust in a new party takes time."

"Right."

Except when it didn't. When the new name flashed through the country like a handful of fairy dust, and it was suddenly the name on everyone's tongues, in everybody's mind's.

 _The Knights_.

"I guess time will tell," Gretchen said, on her way out.

"Time," Sara repeated to herself, before she ran a hand into her auburn hair.

Without a doubt, that was the one single thing Sara ought to be most concerned about.

…

 **End Notes:** So, so sorry about the delay. I swear I will try to get back to a one-chapter-per-week basis as soon as I get my life back in order. Thanks so much for your support, and please keep sharing your thoughts about this story!


	28. Storm

The abolishment of the filibuster didn't altogether eradicate obstructionism in Congress. But for sure, it unjammed the particular wall that Sara had been running against for the past six months.

Then, it was a booming, incredible period of fertility for lawmaking, to the extent that Sara felt her first hundred days had only started kicking off then.

Not that Sara had been inactive before. Especially in the sphere of immigration, she'd kept a lot of the promises that had got her into office. Taking on more refugees, simplifying the program, and sending not only money and food but boats to save those hundreds of thousands drowning on the shores of Europe. That had gotten some criticism, even from Kellerman.

"Europe's business is Europe's business," he said, an altogether clear reminder of how unlike they were.

"People are dying by the thousands, Paul. It's the business of anyone with a conscience."

He chuckled, like this were a personal jab.

"Presidents send their marine forces all over the world when it's to plunder countries and make war. Guess what, Paul – with everything that's going on in the world, with our nuclear armament, and the way the planet is going down faster than any of us can prepare for, I don't think we should waste time warmongering anymore. It's a waste of lives. I'm interested in _saving_ lives. I can't think of a better job for our trained forces."

Paul shrugged, with that somewhat pleased smile as he looked at her. "France won't like it."

"Screw France."

"Is that an official statement?"

Sara smiled back. She might have said, _Screw you_ , and Paul would have liked her the better for it. Their friendship had partly been founded on her sending Paul to hell – it was part of what structured their views in contrast with each other. Where he was pragmatic, she was passionate, and where she could be earnest, he was cold.

Not so cold as he looked.

It was better to remain professional.

"Just do the press talks," she said. "Tell people we're going for a humanitarian presidency. Humanity first. See how they like that."

Most had liked it, as a matter of fact.

Immigrants had made up a non-negligible portion of Sara's electorate and, even before Sara got rid of her congressional block, she'd done what she could to show she hadn't just been courting their vote.

But the Senate had blocked her on education reform, gun reform and on her new budget. The new "People's Budget", it was being called.

In June, as they lifted the filibuster, all the energy and the passion that had gone into creating fresh, more equalitarian laws, all unbottled onto Congress like a torrent of sea water that's broken through an ice wall.

Yes, the Republicans still had the majority in Congress and technically didn't _need_ the filibuster to block their laws. Except partisanship was no longer a thing that went without saying, among Republicans, especially since the split created by Bagwell's resignation.

In one month, already a radical minority – but a considerable minority, nonetheless – had declared their support for Bagwell, and some actually went as far as sporting a capital K on their suits, from discreet pins to more sizeable badges. It made Sara sick to her stomach.

Sometimes, she wished she could hear Michael about this – just the sound of his voice, on this increasingly irrational world, would make her feel better.

No.

Really, it might actually make her feel worse.

 _Now's not a good time for you to get involved in politics, Michael. Now more than ever, it is a jungle, and all the laws in the food chain have been altered. We don't know what's eating what anymore, and there are some that'll eat anything to get to the top._

The months wore on, and Sara managed to pass an impressive amount of bipartisan legislation – increased access to scholarship in July, healthcare in August, when she improved Obamacare by extending the number of people it covered throughout the country, and in September, signing into law some protective measures to prevent discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation.

Still, part of her remained unsatisfied, and it wasn't even because of the rising popularity of the radical Knights, and the shiver of disgust that ran through her every time she heard Bagwell's voice on the radio.

The way Sara missed Michael was by no means your typical case of heartbreak. 'Heartbreak', she felt, couldn't cover what had happened between them, and anyway, Sara had been so unimaginably busy since she'd stepped into the White House that she didn't have much time to miss him, plain and simple. Sometimes, when she tried to think about what he was doing, how far deep he might have sunk into these deep waters she had learned to swim in for most of her life, a great fear took over her, and it was like the jaws of hell had opened up beneath her.

It wasn't only concern for the man she loved, but guilt.

She remembered the discreet beautiful man she had met at Charles's charity center, who had been content to help people on a smaller scale.

It was her fault he had nearly found himself catapulted in the midst of a sex scandal, her fault he had felt so helpless in the face of injustice that there was nothing to do for him anymore but take up arms and fight.

And nothing could stop her from feeling as though she had come through Michael's life like a red storm and left him shipwrecked, ruined, after having destroyed what had been the most meaningful relationship in his life.

Sara's friends used to chaff her about that.

Taking the full blame of the world on her shoulders, like every wrong anywhere was somehow hers to make right. What was she, Superman?

That last was a real proper question. Who _but_ a superman could fix the issues plaguing their modern world, could feel concerned not only about the suffering of those he knew, but everyone's?

Empathy was at the heart of what had plunged Sara into that jungle, before it could even feel like a choice. She knew deep inside her that it was the same for Michael.

That there was no one to talk to about him, no one that knew about their story, made it even easier for the whole affair to feel like a dream. When Sara went to sleep, still unused to her surroundings, she often thought about the motel rooms, and how for a few hours, she would feel like a normal woman. How she wouldn't think _at all_ , sometimes, until she and Michael had half-consciously gotten each other out of their clothes, how desire pulsed inside her so quick and hungry, it seemed to have a mind of its own, and she would only breathe, relax, once Michael was inside her, and the warmth of his body against hers recalled to life undreamt of appetites, unforeseen passions.

 _He's the only thing in my life that's ever been mine. The one thing that's ever been about me, not about the world_.

 _And what did I do with it?_

Why, the same thing Sara had always done with her personal desires.

Pushed him aside.

Politics, or love for humanity, was the single-most demanding husband – a wounded, crippled body that required your full attention, every minute of every day, so you could never full devote yourself to something else.

Michael had once told Sara he would wait for her, but Sara was coming to realize she also needed to wait for herself.

Because she couldn't afford to turn her back on her country, now of all times.

"Men pick duty over desire all the time," she told herself, "and no one finds them heartless for it."

Though the thought of her lover tormented Sara's sleep, she had enough self-collection that it did not affect the rest of her life.

That was true until the first week of December 2021.

Being in Washington is no guarantee that you'll run into the president. Lincoln actually pointed this out to Michael, when the younger brother mentioned his project. In all those months, they had had more than enough time to work on the strategies and characters of the political elite, whom Lincoln had either eavesdropped on at the Everest, or whom Michael had worked to gain information about in his industrious way. Over the past year, he had established an actual network of people who could be persuaded to help him gather small scraps on information, all of which pieced together amounted to quite an avalanche of knowledge.

No doubt, this was a considerable weapon they held between their hands. The only question now was, what to do with it?

By that time, Lincoln's notebook had been copied and recopied, then all but the original and a well-hidden safeguard had been destroyed. What remained in Michael's hand was a large, well-filled black notebook. He had insisted on the color. Had enough humor left that the elite's little black book should actually be black – poetic irony.

"So," Lincoln waved at the notebook, one day when he was getting ready to leave his apartment. "What do we do with it now?"

Michael flicked his thumb over the binding, a line of deep focus furrowing his brows.

"Now," he said, eyes on the book still, "we give it to the president."

Lincoln's jaw slackened. His brother was a man of great self-composure, would have no doubt stopped it from dropping even a little. "What?"

"We can't email it to her. Not without this getting to an army of other people first – her people, no doubt, but that she must be smart enough not to trust completely. Phone conversations are out of the question, too. Even if I had means to contact her, I don't trust they're as private as she believes. And this is too serious to be handled lightly."

"So, what?" Lincoln shrugged, in that way he had of shrugging when he was astonished. "You'll just fly to DC and go knocking on the door of the White House: 'Hi, I'm a justice vigilante and I'd like to see the president' –"

"Don't be a fool," Michael said, and walked towards the door, where Lincoln still stood, coat-clad, all ready to leave but for the actual leaving.

He seemed to get the hint and reached for the knob.

"I know Sara," Michael added, so maybe his brother would leave with his mind at ease. "I'll think of something."

…

The temperature was a little below zero degrees, and Michael's cheeks turned pink with cold as he waited outside the Hamilton, on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House in view.

Thank God, the weather was dry, but he had to flex his fingers inside his pockets to keep the blood in them running. He could feel the cold wind through his wool hat, snaking through the knots of his scarf. Patience was an important quality to have. His lips cracked into a smile as he pictured what Lincoln would do in his shoes – shift from one foot to another, pace, maybe. Telltale signs that people would notice. Linc had always hated waiting.

By the time he caught glimpse of her, Michael had been steeling himself for impassiveness so long, he'd almost cheated himself into thinking this would work.

Maybe it did. On the surface.

But inside, at the first flash of auburn hair, Michael catapulted back in time, months turning to years, the smell of her in motel room sheets – she always left faster than he did, so he had a little more time to replay what had happened, to grab a fistful of bedcover and inhale her, one last breath of air for his intoxicated lungs; they never knew exactly when they would see each other again.

Half-crescents of blood were forming in the insides of his palms, where his fingernails were planted hard.

A flock of bodyguards around her, as he had expected, and she hadn't spotted him yet.

He couldn't move, of course, couldn't so much as wave his head so her eye would be drawn to him automatically.

But Michael had faith.

Not much of it left, but some, and it kept him still and patient.

 _She'll see me_. _She has to_.

Beside Sara, a little closer than the bodyguards, there was a man, maybe six two, black suit, black sunglasses, who looked like he could have been a guard himself, but whose attitude tore him apart from the rest.

It looked like he was talking to her.

Michael thought this was probably Paul.

The go-to-guy, the right-hand man. The very thing that Michael himself couldn't be.

Michael took full advantage of this moment, to look and not be looked at. It's a good thing to know your rival and though the two men may not have been competing for Sara's love, they were rivals, all the same, each of them drawing her toward different poles.

But Michael's gaze soon returned to Sara. Her red hair gleamed in the winter sun, her cheeks had that warm peach tinge that Michael remembered marveling at, with a lover's adoration, stroking his index across the soft skin, each line, each curve, was to him an unexplained miracle he only knew how to worship.

Michael tried to swallow the knot jamming his throat.

A gust of wind carried the smell of her hair into his nostrils.

He hadn't expected for it to be this hard, to just stand there, not to move, not to speak, knowing he would most likely catch a bullet if he tried to reach out to her –

To his mind, at this second, it seemed unfathomable why two lovers should ever have so many mountains to cross.

 _Not mountains_ , he corrected himself.

Jungles.

Then there was a light shift in the air, and Sara's eyes darted from Paul and all the way across the street, until they set on him.

Somehow, she didn't stop, didn't even pause.

She was in moving waters, and they carried her along without effort. But her eyes remained frozen, fixed on the inexplicable glimpse of the past who had materialized before her, her lover in the flesh, her lover that she hadn't spoken to or heard of in nearly a year.

Transparent feeling traveled between them.

If they had been able to talk, he would have spoken her name – always her full name, never affectionate diminutives. She was never _love_ , or _darling_ , those nicknames that were too familiar, inadequate for the awe she still inspired inside Michael.

 _Sara_.

He wished he could say it now, so she could hear the full weight of his respect, could hear that she was still the sole master of his whole being – that she still had his absolute devotion.

Somehow, she knew how to show things with her eyes much better than he did.

Already, in her cinnamon gaze, he could detect bewilderment – did she see coldness when he looked back at her, did his efforts to check any outburst translate as impassiveness?

There was no time for such thoughts.

Michael had to act fast, as long as she still had her eyes on him, as long as he hadn't been noticed.

Lowering his eyes, so she would know where to look, he removed the black woolen glove that had been nicely waiting inside his coat pocket, and let it fall to the ground.

Then he walked away, before his gaze could will him to straighten his head for one last look, before temptation could take roots strong enough to shake his resistance.

She'd seen him, he thought. She'd seen him drop the glove and she'd be back for it, and she'd find his message, in the shape of an origami crane.

But these thoughts were swept away in a tumult of greater strength –

 _I've seen her_.

For over a year, Sara had been only a voice, a face in the news. Her pervasiveness would have made it impossible to forget her even if it had been Michael's wish, or something he thought was possible. But somehow, when he focused on work, he had been able to restrain the flow of feelings she still triggered when he saw her in dreams, when the taste of her skin was fresh as yesterday on his lips. During the day, Sara was nearly back to being what she had been before Michael actually met her – one of the rare sensible voices left in America, in today's politics.

Now, as Michael fled down 14th Street, he realized what a complete delusion that had been.

He hadn't flown to Washington DC and spent the past two hours waiting out in the cold to be of service to his president.

What he had loved about Sara in part was her belief in righteousness and justice, but it was clear now that his love went far beyond either of those things.

 _It could just be you and me against the world, Sara, and right or wrong, I'd follow you, for better or worse, I'd follow you anywhere, if it should kill me, if it should damn us both._

"If you'd asked me," he spoke in a breath, even as he hurried in the street, the crowd a dizzying carousel of winter coats and fading faces.

One day, maybe _he_ 'd ask her, maybe he'd say it.

To hell with the world. She, too, deserved peace, and freedom, and all the happiness he could give her.

If things got desperate enough, he didn't want to have to watch her go down with the ship. He hoped there was still enough chivalry in the world that they could save each other, and at least have the comfort of each other's arms as they watched the world burn.

…

 **End Notes** : That was an intense chapter to get down. Please share your thoughts!


	29. Rendezvous

Twenty minutes to midnight.

The hour wasn't necessarily a deal-breaker in the White House – you could find people working all day and all night, Sara not least among them, say, when some important piece of legislation was being passed, and you had to work on a strategy for enough people to vote in favor of it.

But that night was a quiet night, it seemed, to everyone except Sara.

The young woman was currently pacing the oval office; she'd taken off her shoes, medium heels, black, so no one would stand the chance of overhearing her inner deliberations. Sure, the room was supposed to be sufficiently well-built to guard against eavesdroppers, but you never knew, you _never_ knew who had ears and where, and just how far reaching they could be.

For the umpteenth time, Sara reread the brief message on the small origami crane, which she'd found inside the forgotten glove she'd come back for, later in the day.

Rendezvous. Midnight. Garden.

The words were typed, not handwritten, which made her think Michael had gotten all the time he needed this year to get more cautious.

"He can't mean _this_ garden," she thought.

But, racking her head for any such place that had marked their relationship, she could come up with none – and anyway, he couldn't have expected her to just fly to Chicago, without warning anyone.

Insane. Completely insane.

After his incredible apparition in Washington DC, though, Sara was willing to believe almost anything.

Her thumb worked on smoothening the wing of the paper bird in her hand.

Origami, she remembered, was how Michael used to communicate with his brother, when he didn't want anyone else knowing – their secret language, so to speak.

Michael had told her all this, a night that felt a lifetime ago, in a motel room that didn't seem to exist in the same world as this one, where Sara could be barefoot and pacing nervously in the oval office.

"The crane," she remembered him saying, "stands for protection – watching over people. Lincoln was the first one to come up with them," he shrugged. "I just followed suit."

Sara didn't remember exactly what she'd answered – maybe that his brother sounded like a nice man, and she hoped she could meet him some day.

Sara glanced at her watch. Just ten to midnight.

"Goddamn it," she swore under her breath.

It's common knowledge that the president of the United States never goes anywhere without his bodyguards. Sara hadn't made any particular effort to resist that – first, because she was realistic as to how many people in this country might want to kill her, and also because she had always refused to play the part of the rebellious teenager who sneaks out her bedroom window at night, moves below the radar of parental supervision. She had not done it to her father then, and she would not do it now, to her country.

But if there were no exceptions to that close supervision, there were nonetheless flexibilities.

Her bodyguards didn't usually follow her around inside the White House. Sure enough, they were there if she hollered, if she so much as grazed the right button on her phone, but she could walk from her bedroom to the oval without company, which greatly facilitated nightly hours of extra work.

Five minutes were still wanting for the appointed time when Sara slipped out of the oval and into the rose garden, barely thinking to put her shoes back on. Ludicrous. Not because she stood any risk of meeting anyone there that'd want her to explain what she was doing – these were her lodgings, at least for the next three years. If she wanted to take a night stroll in the garden, she bloody hell would.

But that didn't stop her from feeling like a fool, as she treaded outside, the cold air stiffening her whole body – she thought of going back inside for her coat but didn't, just walked further on, surprising herself by cursing Michael in her head.

She was the most powerful woman in the country, and he was playing games with her.

Then, as she spotted Michael, as surreal as he had looked this afternoon, dressed in a guard's uniform, that all-encompassing reality of politics, power plays and domination techniques, became dimmer.

There was a level of reality, that had maybe never existed outside their shared dreams and motel rooms, where they were both only lovers, and where it wasn't completely absurd for him to summon her here, to act as if they were star-crossed teenagers cursed with overprotective parents, the eternal game of tossing rocks at a window and climbing down a bedroom wall.

"Are you _mad_?" She said as soon as she found her voice.

His blue eyes gleamed like two starlit pieces snatched from the sky. In them, there was an earnest enough gaze that hinted he realized how serious the situation was. Slowly, he walked closer to her, until her chest was throbbing alarmingly.

This was too sudden, too dreamlike and, at the same time, too dangerously real.

"You could have been shot, trying to come in here. You could have been caught and _jailed_ , Michael. And I don't want to hear how you did it, or how many people in my staff I'd have to fire for this –"

"Sara."

" _Do_ _not_ coax me."

He thankfully took her warning as a hint not to step any closer. The distance he maintained between them was respectable, nearly professional, but absurd, incomprehensible.

She realized at once how angry she was at him, for pulling something like this.

"What are you doing here, Michael? What did you _think_? That we could sneak away like two lovebirds, maybe back into my office, treat the White House like it were just one of our romantic getaway places? Jesus."

"You misunderstand."

His very calm fueled her anger. She was all the angrier that he got to act cool and composed, that he had all the information in hand while he left her with nothing but sentiment –

For a second, for the fire that ran in her veins and sent her brain into a wild haze, and for the cold intensity of his blue stare, she hated him.

It was enough for her to put a check on her own feelings.

"This isn't about us," he explained.

The words sounded nonsensical to her.

"I had to find a way to give you this, without anyone knowing." He produced a thick black notebook from his inner pocket.

Though he extended it to her, she kept her hands chained to her side, stunned.

Did he really think that she would just take it, that her fingers would brush his, that they would touch like it meant nothing?

"There's helpful information in it," he said. "About a lot of people in Washington. It's –"

"I don't care what it is."

He fell silent at the sharpness in her tone.

"You have no right to be here, Michael. You have no right to come here, to make me see you, to leave me no choice – to act like this would do nothing to us."

"Sara –"

"Shut up."

Though her cheeks had turned crimson, she could no longer feel the coldness of night. Nails like ice shards digging into the flesh of her palms.

The thought that if she reached out for him, right now, she could touch him, made everything else seem futile.

What enraged her most was that he might actually believe this – believe he had come here as nothing but a patriot, a masked lover of justice, devoted to his country and to his president.

There would have been other ways for him to give her this. Michael was a clever, clever man. If he could find a way inside the White House at night without anyone knowing, he could find a way to pass her some notebook that didn't require them meeting face to face.

Though he might deny it, she understood perfectly _why_ they were both standing here, right now.

And she felt she had every right to be angry at him for it –

Not only for his denial, but for his bringing them together when she could not grab his neck and kiss him, lose herself in the warmth of his body, here, in the moonlit presidential garden. When she would have to go back inside that office and cope with her reawakened senses –

Over a year of separation had been enough to cheat her body, to make herself forget they both lived in the same world, in the same universe.

Now, there was nothing to do but stare at him and show him the lake of fire he'd called back to life, the burning torrent that strove to bridge the few steps of absurd distance between them.

"I'm sorry," he said.

The weight of the words let her knew he meant it.

Sharp breaths struggled through her clenched teeth, as she held eye-contact with the man who had burst into her life with the impact of a force of nature, but had somehow not altered its course.

Sara didn't believe in fate, yet it felt impossible to imagine anything at all might have steered her away from the presidency.

And right now, this moment –

Standing face to face with Michael, after all this time, and to be talking about anything other than the raging desires that devoured them both…

For the first time in Sara's life, the thought of fate took on a whole new face.

"We don't have much time," she said. His pragmatism had cut her, and she didn't mean for hers to hurt him back. "If you want to explain yourself, you better be fast."

"Over the past year," Michael said, "I worked on gathering a network of information on the most crucial actors in Washington."

Michael almost added that Lincoln had helped with that – not only through his new job at the restaurant, but old contacts, the sort of people who knew about the dirty little secrets of the cream of society. The jungle-world of politics wasn't as hard to understand as you might think. Much like the construction of a building, Michael thought, it was a matter of who applied pressure on what people, thus keeping the whole structure from collapsing, by making sure each fissure was well-polished and safe from scrutiny.

Nothing that happened in this world was free from consequence. The big corporations that funded campaigns wanted something in return – the unnegotiable absence of gun control, for instance, or Happy Meals in school cafeterias for kids. Then there was the more covert power play – the rule of _I'll keep your secret if you keep mine_ sort of affair, corruption proper. And once that structure was revealed in broad daylight, once all the pressure points were put to the foreground, it became almost easy to predict what anyone was going to do, who was pulling the strings, and who you really needed to get to if you were hoping to make a change.

In his research, Lincoln's network had been very helpful, as had his own industrious investigations. But there was no time for Michael to throw himself on a detailed _exposé_ , and he would sooner not mention Lincoln to her, anyhow.

"This is everything," he said.

She glanced at the notebook, without actually making a gesture to take it.

"Everything?"

"Everything that could be helpful for you in your handling of these people."

Sara arched an eyebrow. "You expect you can teach me anything about people I personally interact with? How long have you been in Washington, Michael? You do know I read the news like you do, and keep myself informed about their history –"

"There are other ways of finding things out about people. Ways a little less accessible."

Ridiculously, Sara thought of the recording of Bagwell's private phone conversations that Michael's brother had gotten them the previous year.

"I hope you're not confessing to a federal crime, Michael."

His lips broke into a grin.

She could have slapped him.

"If you want to have me arrested, Sara, you only have to shout for security."

She put ice into her gaze – whether to punish him for thinking right now was a good time to joke, or to tame the still-rising heat inside her, she was unsure.

"You realize how insane this is, right? That you can't just _come here_ anytime you think you have information I could use –"

"It's the last time," he said. "This is only part of what I've been working on this year, it's the last of it. I have to focus on something else now."

He watched as she sucked in her bottom lip slightly. If she wanted to ask what it consisted in – the other half of his plan – she wanted to betray interest in his life even less.

Doubt rattled through his frame.

Or was she only trying to meet his coldness halfway?

What else was he supposed to do? Sneaking in the White House garden was bad enough. To act anything like a secret lover at that moment would be unforgiveable.

But maybe it was also intended as punishment, because _a secret lover_ was all she'd ever seen fit to make him.

And he could be more than that.

The thought that he had done all this only as a way to show off – or that she might think so – disgusted him so deeply, he felt an urgent need to get away from here, this garden, all of Washington.

He had sworn himself he would not touch her, would not so look like he so much as wanted to…

 _She's the president of the United States, the leader of the free world._

Michael would never forgive himself if passion caught up with his bigger plan, and he wound up treating her with anything short of the utter respect she deserved. That was the least he could do, after summoning her here in the first place.

"You shouldn't have come here tonight," she said.

Her eyes hadn't lowered from his. The weight of the notebook in his hand seemed to exist only in a lesser dimension.

Washington be damned – she was beautiful. The thought sank in naturally, and Michael could think of nothing to do to stop it.

Her long hair was loose, it was rare enough to see it like that on television – her advisors must have said, Cut it short. Long hair was too womanly, too seductive, two things she should tone down as much as possible if she wanted to make it in that world.

Male politicians get away with being charming, but in woman what does it lead back to but the timeless tale of the snake and the apple, and leading mankind to its own fall?

 _Presidential_ as she might be, the imagined distance between them was not complete. Michael could still remember sliding his fingers through her red hair that looked like liquid fire in his fist, when he gripped it tighter in the throes of desire, the salty taste of her skin when he kissed it. She aimed for his lips, but he was too eager to hear her, the hoarseness of her moans in the night, her ragged breathing –

Michael broke eye-contact with her, like an invisible hand had gripped him by the neck and forced him away.

 _Thou shalt not think of seducing the most important woman in the country, thou lowly being._

As she didn't seem intent on taking the notebook from him, he crouched and laid it at her feet. And as he did so, he got a flash of the first image that first tempted him to join her into that jungle, that image of courtly love and timeless devotion.

Lancelot and Guinevere.

"I'll just leave this here." He said, realized he might have only left this here for her to find in the first place, with an origami bird so she would know it came from him.

 _We didn't have to see each other._

 _I didn't have to take that burning knife and sink it deeper into both of us, tearing nerve and flesh, causing lasting damage._

"I'm sorry, Sara." He spoke her name softly, like his very tongue might defile it.

A sudden burst of light exploded inside his chest as she caught his hand when he moved to turn away.

"Wait."

He looked shock that she could have broken the distance between them at all – as if he'd convinced himself throughout their interview that invisible fortresses stood between them.

She was close to him now, close enough that he breathed in the familiar smell of her hair and perfume, mingled with more sober aroma he didn't know – was that what the White House smelled like?

 _Jesus, what an unthinkable situation._

The warmth of her breath on his face, the pink curve of her lip, suddenly in reach.

"Whatever it is you plan to do… promise me you'll be careful," she said, while her eyes, returning the intensity of his flaring gaze, said something else.

"I promise."

He was unsure which one of them first tore away.

It was for the best –

There, in the moonlight, in the icy night, with no witnesses around, he wasn't sure how much longer they could remain together without something between them bursting.

Touching her, which he had viewed an unforgiveable a few minutes before, now seemed inevitable, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the unspoken torrent pouring between them erased what remained of their restraint.

"You'll be careful, too?" He said.

"I'll do my best."

He walked further back into the garden, still facing her – somehow, it didn't feel fair that he should get to walk away from her.

Long after he was gone, Sara remained standing, alone in the night, numb from the cold, dizzy as if she had just come down from a long, rattling ride.

By the time she stooped to pick up the notebook Michael had left on the ground, the thick black cover was cold, and her own fingers paper-white.

The clock on the wall only read thirty past midnight when she slithered back in.

Without considering going all the way to her suite, Sara let herself drop on the couch, where the most powerful people in the country sat turn by turn.

Just yesterday evening, she had sat there and had a phone conversation with Vladimir Putin, who suggested she view the accusations as to her birthplace as a compliment. At least, he told her, the public alleged Russia this time, not Africa.

Yet, even with that in mind, Sara couldn't deny that there had never been a night in her presidency stranger than this one.

…

 **End Notes** : What an intense chapter this was for me to get through. Can't wait to know your thoughts. Promise I'll update soon.


	30. Quest

The year 2022 kicked in – by no means a quiet beginning. Sara Tancredi had promised the world change, and change, or so Lincoln was coming to learn, came in the form of snow storms, erupting volcanoes, forces of nature that the right leader might initiate and then merely to do their best to keep under check.

Although Lincoln hadn't seen his brother since last December, when they'd finished their grand "notebook" operation, the massive gathering of information on people in Washington, he still read the news frequently and kept himself informed. The newsfeed that got his cellphone buzzing every half hour, those sensationalist article titles: "The President's Groundbreaking Speech", "It's Time for Reform", "The Tancredi Administration Takes On Gun Control".

"Wow," Lincoln said. Found there was nothing cleverer or more appropriate to say.

The trigger event had been another school shooting in January. Due to her already well-known opposition to the NRA, Lincoln, as all Americans, had expected Sara's response to be tough – but nothing quite like this.

Though her anger was as palpable as her Democrat predecessor when he handled a similar event, Sara made a stronger effort to keep it in, and she didn't cry as, coming from a female figure, those tears could not achieve greatness or sublimity.

"What I want to focus on tonight," she said, after the necessary comment on the massacre itself, "is that the problem beleaguering our country is simple. All schools in every nation have bullies. All schools are unfortunately fertile grounds for cruel behavior and resent. But in no other country does this sort of behavior evolve into mass shootings. And I'm tired of hearing this problem be given ludicrous alternative explanations – I'm tired of hearing the problem is mental illness, or the fact that teachers don't carry enough weapons. The problem is perhaps the simplest one facing our country to this day – and contrary to what we've all been hearing, it isn't anything but guns, and the fact that powerful corporations have everything to gain in keeping them absurdly easy to purchase."

"Now," Sara resumed after a short pause, commanding such respectful attention, Lincoln could almost forget he was watching from the screen of his cell phone. "We've heard the Senate's voice on this not ten years ago. The voice I want to hear, now, is the people's. In the following week, we're going to issue not a poll but another referendum, after which both Houses will work in bipartisan cooperation to create new legislation, for a safer future. It's time America faces itself once and for all."

Lincoln was hardly aware his mouth was hanging open until a playful hand stroked across his cheek, and he started, like a teen caught masturbating.

"Insane, isn't it?" Veronica said, as she wrapped an arm around his bare chest and settled her head against the crook of his neck, watching the rest of the video from behind his shoulder.

They were both currently at her apartment – an impressive loft, whose view through the bedroom window fittingly reminded Lincoln of the Everest, where they'd met many months ago.

"You've watched this?" Lincoln said.

"I caught the replay yesterday night, when you were asleep."

Unfortunately for Lincoln, Veronica was the lightest sleeper he'd ever seen. A mere grunt could wake her – and since Halloween 2020, since the traumatic incident at the motel room, Lincoln had had dreams agitated enough to get him screaming in the middle of the night, as his neighbors had been courteous enough to point out.

But Vee was very understanding, one might even say, _political_ about this. She never asked him to tell him what the dreams were about, didn't try to probe into his past, into the dark recesses of his heart.

Softly tracing her fingers over his chest, she kissed the line of his jaw and said, "How about waffles?"

Lincoln should be smiling by now, but he was still in shock from the video, the enormous implications drawing themselves clear in his mind.

"You don't eat breakfast," he noticed, half-absently.

"I know. I just like the smell of waffles in the morning – we can eat them for lunch."

Lincoln realized he had been silent for a few seconds and forced an appropriate response. "Yeah. Sure, whatever you like."

They didn't serve waffles at the Everest, still Lincoln had picked up a few things about decent cooking since he was hired there, over a year ago. Who would have thought then that making waffles for his girlfriend would feature the list of pros.

His relationship with Veronica was a recent though solid development. In December, after Lincoln stopped hearing from Michael, after he stopped spending so much of his spare time working on gathering as much information as he could get on the most crooked heads in DC, Lincoln realized he was going to need something else to get him caring about life real soon, if he didn't want to go crazy.

The first few days were awful, and even all the extra hours at the restaurant didn't fill enough. With nothing to give meaning to his life, all that was left was the terrible guilt of what he'd done, remorse eating at his heart like a carnivorous infant. And then he'd seen Veronica, at her usual table, and walked up to her with steel determination. Something about him must have given away his distress – he saw it reflected all over her face when she looked up at him.

For a second, he had thought she was going to ask, "Are you okay?" But she held silent, staring still into his eyes, until he asked, "Would you like to go out with me sometime?"

It was a while before the surprise on her face wore off and she answered, half-joking, "Only if you do the cooking."

And so, he figured he could hold up to that deal for as long as she would have him.

Veronica chuckled as he headed for the kitchen. "Aren't you going to dress, first?"

"What, never dreamed of a naked man who'd make waffles in your own apartment? I'm the dream, Vee."

She threw a pillow at him.

He was smiling by the time he reached her kitchen and started breaking eggs into a bowl. Butt-naked indeed, but if you closed your eyes and forgot the snow out the window, inside the heated loft, you could think it was summer.

It was only when Lincoln heard his cell phone ring, all the way from the bedroom, that his skin broke into gooseflesh.

"Someone called Michael," Veronica's casual announcement from the bedroom. "You want to get that?"

"Yeah," Lincoln hurried to wipe his hands on his jeans before he remembered he wasn't wearing any. "Shit. Just –"

He grabbed a couple of kitchen towels then leapt toward the bedroom, where Vee was looking at him from under an arched brow. The cell phone was still ringing.

Lincoln didn't try to restrain the urgency in his gaze, didn't know that it was even possible.

Though he had not yet told Veronica anything about his past, for as long as he had known her, he had not lied to her.

"You go ahead and answer," she smiled, springing to her feet in a nimble motion whose grace he obliviously noted. "I'll just go and shower, okay?"

"Yeah."

The phone had turned silent and still on the bed by the time that Lincoln heard the water running from the bathroom. Only then did he dial back his brother's number, beating his fist against the mattress while he waited for him to pick up.

"Hello?"

"Mike, it's me."

He heard his brother's breathing in his ear. The way he breathed when he wanted the words to come out, but he just couldn't get his brain to wrap itself cleanly around a simple sentence.

That's when Lincoln knew for certain Michael was in a bad place.

"Can you come over today?"

"Yeah."

"I just feel we should talk –"

"Yeah, yes, Michael."

For a second, everything was going so fast Lincoln thought maybe he was in one of those dreams where Michael asked for his help, and he would jump through hoops racing for the fastest way to grant it. These were the good dreams – finally, a chance to redeem himself, a chance to give back, to start paying.

"Are you home?" Lincoln asked. "I'll come over right now if you want."

"All right."

Silence speared between them. Lincoln's lips were burning to ask, Did you see the speech? But he didn't dare, not over the phone.

"I'll see you soon then."

"Thank you."

Michael hung up, and the two words he had spoken hung like dismembered limbs about the room, replaying in Lincoln's brain.

Then, Veronica emerged from the bathroom, deliciously pink and smoldering skin bare but for a towel hooked at the chest.

It all flashed through his head in a beat, the way the morning could have gone, waffles and love-making, the soft feel of Veronica's hands on his cheeks – she liked to hold his face when they were kissing.

"I'm sorry, I gotta –"

Lincoln stammered on his way to get his jeans.

"You're leaving?"

"I just – something came up."

"Work?"

"Yeah. No," he corrected and looked back at her, while still blindly fumbling to button up his shirt.

A veil like a rain-laden cloud fell over her eyes.

 _She's seen men like you before, men who're hiding something, men whose lives get a great deal darker than homemade waffles on a Sunday morning._

Lincoln moistened his lips, almost said this was a family emergency, but he remembered she didn't even know he had family.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I know this must not make sense to you –"

"It might if you explained."

Though her voice was soft, the look in her eyes was graver than he'd ever seen it.

"But you won't," she said.

And he was unable to contradict her.

Once he was fully dressed, he walked tentatively to meet her and tried to kiss her on the cheek.

She turned away, not with scorn or particular coldness. Her face was still that unreadable surface that had fascinated him at the restaurant.

"You don't have to tell me everything," she said. "But I won't be treated like this, Linc."

"No," he agreed. "You shouldn't be."

Like it'd grown a will of its own, his hand hovered over her hair for a moment. He wanted to embrace her, kiss the top of her head –

The image struck him as ridiculous.

 _Like I were a soldier leaving for war, while the woman I loved waited for my return_.

So Lincoln only headed for the door with one last look of apology. He didn't say, I'll call you, because she knew he would, and the real question was of course whether or not she'd answer.

As the first breath of winter air hit Lincoln's face, outside Veronica's building, Lincoln flexed his fingers into fists and he thought this was a little bit like war, even though he was the last thing like a soldier.

…

It immediately struck Lincoln how empty Michael's apartment looked, even before his brother fully opened the door. Just as he cracked it open, Lincoln noticed the somewhat absurdly blank wall behind him, wrong, all wrong, like bones that had been picked clean of flesh.

 _No spider web_.

When he let Lincoln in, the shock was all the more complete. The walls still bore the traces of removed pins, dents where Michael had needed a hammer to remove them. Without thinking, Lincoln moved to it and stroke his fingers across the surface, the Braille-like sensation, his mouth open in dismay.

"You've destroyed it?"

"Yes."

The sound of Michael's voice reminded Lincoln he'd come here for more urgent reasons. He turned back, and his brother took the time to explain.

"We didn't need it anymore. Sara has the notebook. That's all this was ever supposed to amount to."

"You could have kept it."

"As a souvenir?"

"No, I mean –" But Lincoln realized he was making excuses. "Maybe."

"Just its being there was an unnecessary risk. Can you imagine if anyone apart from you and me had seen it?"

That was true, naturally. Lincoln had never thought about how his brother had gone about having food delivered or even answering the postman all year, with that thing on his wall.

"I'm sorry. I didn't think to ask if you wanted to say goodbye."

But the teasing was wrong, hollow, like dissonant music.

Before he could help himself, Lincoln drew his brother into a near-hug. His forearm behind Michael's neck, so the two brothers were close enough that he could feel the panic inside his brother's chest, crying for an outlet.

This was how he used to hold him, when they were younger and Michael avoided conversation.

Lincoln hadn't asked if this was okay, and Michael didn't look like it surprised him.

Why shouldn't it be okay? Were they not still brothers?

Right now, as Michael's pain was becoming so tangible, Lincoln could almost see it snaking about his brother's skin, there was no other single truth that seemed to matter.

"I'm afraid," Michael said.

Indeed, it was the first time Lincoln had ever seen his brother like this. Before, he'd treated Sara's achievements with distant approval – if the progresses she made had struck a deeper chord, then he'd kept it to himself, and Lincoln hadn't tried to dig and uncover the secret joy or apprehension.

But this was different.

Michael had put the right word on it.

Fear in its blackest, most unstoppable form. The abyss that pulls you in, whose great gaping maw mocks your absence of control.

"For her?" Lincoln said.

"She'll do it." He said. "Take on the NRA. She won't back down, she won't admit to failure."

"And you're afraid they'll kill her."

Michael took a step back. His fist against his forehead, he turned toward the wall, whose whiteness part of Lincoln still found unthinkable.

"You know who these people are," Michael said. "What do you think they'll do? Send her a couple death threats?"

Amazingly, Michael shrugged. His lips were a white line, the face of a dead man.

"And when she keeps going? Who do they have that they can use as leverage? Not her father. No, Justice Frank's been the NRA's pal for decades. They'll go straight after her, Linc. A sniper from a rooftop, and that's all there is. Simple as that."

Michael chuckled, the most disturbing sound Lincoln ever remembered hearing.

"How can she help people from the grave? Why can't she see that if she pushes too far, they'll end her, they'll –"

"Hey."

Lincoln extended a hand in his brother's direction, unsure what it was aiming for.

"It's gonna be fine."

"Don't tell me that, Linc, when you know there's hell coming her way. It's not _right_."

"We'll find a way. We'll think of something."

Michael kept his head down. He was silent for such a long time, Lincoln almost didn't hear him when he said, "I need to be there."

"What?"

A shiver ran down his spine at the crossroads of his brother's direct blue eyes. Such fierce determination. Lincoln didn't ever recall seeing him like that.

"I need to be there, in Washington."

Lincoln chuckled – it was ludicrous. "Mike, she's the president of the United States. She has a host of bodyguards, following her wherever she goes. If anyone's going to keep her safe, that's their role."

"Maybe." He answered with an absurd logic. "But it's mine, even more."

Lincoln's lips hung open for a while.

"So, you're just going to go to Washington? Drop all your plans for becoming a lawyer –"

"That's still on its way. I've been passing all the tests for the correspondence courses. And I can find new lawyers to shadow in Washington. I already have contacts."

"Wait, Michael, just wait –"

"Wait? And then what?" His direct blue eyes brimming with anger.

Lincoln realized it had never struck him before, how ruthless this must feel. Being hopelessly in love with the most visible, the single most important woman in the country. A woman who must receive death threats and crazed love letters by the hundred. A woman that billions of people's lives depended upon, that could alter the course of the world with just a phone call.

The very thought of such tremendous power left Lincoln feeling awed.

He hadn't the slightest idea what it must feel like, how _humbling_ it must be, loving such a woman.

And then he thought despite himself of how much Michael had changed, in the past few years.

He didn't mean the growing stubble on his cheeks which used to be neatly shaven.

The muscles beneath his shirt, the very layer of his skin, seemed to have gotten thicker, like water hardening into ice, increasing in volume. Lincoln didn't know if that was just an impression or if his brother had actually saved up time to work out, in between digging up the vilest secrets of public figures and self-teaching himself into a lawyer. In the state Michael was in, he could imagine him filling the lone hours of the night with pushups and weight-lifting, to keep himself awake, aware, ready.

The most baffling change remained the steel determination in his blue eyes. Michael used to have such a gentle look, Lincoln had never thought for the past thirty-some years that these eyes knew how to express anything but kindness.

"Wait for her to be martyred, Lincoln?" Michael said. "I can just see it, can't you? A sniper-execution caught on live TV. Our new Kennedy. Christ, martyrdom might just work, you know. The people might riot enough that they'll root out the NRA – or seem to. Her Vice President will make a paternalistic address at her funeral. A couple of gaudy pieces of legislation will pass, restricting check controls on buying weapons, but people will just turn a blind eye when it comes to their being applied. And people will say, yes, she was a great woman, but deep down – deep down, this will be a warning to all women who think they can reach for the highest seat in the land, and to all people who think they can seriously challenge the status quo."

"Michael, I get you."

"No you don't. Because I've just talked about what will happen to _you_. You," Michael said, "the people of the United States." He shook his head. The cold gleam of his eyes looked mad, untamable. "I haven't said what will happen to me."

And Lincoln did not need to assess his brother's face any further to know he would not.

"But I won't let it," Michael said. "I won't _lose_ her, Linc."

Lincoln nodded. His tongue felt pasty in his mouth. He struggled to piece together a coherent sentence. "Maybe I could try to strike a deal with Abruzzi."

Michael chuckled. "No."

"He's influential. He could maybe try to protect her –"

"We don't have enough leverage to try and control a man like Abruzzi. Besides, his protection would ultimately turn into domination. Sara would not have his help if she were asked. I won't bring this on her."

"All right."

Lincoln's even tone was helpless to express the panic that had stormed into his brain.

His little brother, moving to Washington. His brother alone now in that great mission he had set up for himself, and in which Lincoln had been so happy to be of help.

 _Does he know that our work_ , Lincoln thought, _our_ quest _, is the only thing that ties me back to this world?_

Veronica flashed into his mind, her milky skin, the commanding strength in her eyes.

He brushed the thought away, burned the traces from his brain.

Right now, it felt selfish – somehow, unforgiveable, that he should have this one thing he cherished all to himself, while Michael had been sentenced to being kept apart from the woman he loved.

Lincoln wanted to pick himself clean of superfluous sentiment, wanted to be nothing in the eyes of Michael but a brother, a man who was still willing to do anything to redeem himself.

 _So I get to be happy but Michael doesn't? After all I've done, I get to have joy and a wonderful woman and waffles on Sunday?_

 _What does Michael get?_

"I'll come with you," he said. "To Washington."

Michael shook his head. "You have your life, here, in Chicago."

"I'll find work in Washington. My résumé's top-notch now, in case you forgot. Heck, I've been employee of the year at the Everest, I might even get a job at the White House."

The look on Michael's face made it clear he was in no state to register this was a joke.

"You know I've always traveled light."

"No, Linc –"

"It's been working well, hasn't it?"

Lincoln hadn't meant to do this, to break the invisible rule between them where most of the important things remained in the realm of the unsaid.

"Our working together. I've missed it, in the past few months – I've missed it so much, Michael. Please, let me be of help."

The silence that sat between them was absolute. Michael had sold the antique clock that used to tick away the time so loudly it'd keep Lincoln from sleep when he stayed at the apartment.

Finally, Michael turned back and headed for the kitchen, where his coat lay atop the small counter that separated both rooms.

"Here." He produced a piece of paper from his coat pocket and handed it to Lincoln.

Lincoln took it without thinking. "What is it?"

The paper only read, scrawled in blue ink, in Michael's minute handwriting: Fernando Sucre. Tuesday 11 p.m. Airport.

"It's someone I've promised to help," Michael answered. "And I can't do it from Washington. He needs assistance – legal assistance."

"What? Wait, but I –"

"Didn't you tell me you knew a lawyer?"

Lincoln's throat felt dry when he swallowed.

"You can call me and write me the details. I'll do what I can as far as the law's concerned. But what he needs foremost is a place to stay, where he and his girl can lie low."

Lincoln nodded. "Of course. Whatever you need."

There was no bitterness in his voice.

He refused to feel bitter, to feel like the lowly squire who asked to follow a knight on his quest to rescue the queen, and who was only asked instead to look after the house and keep it in order.

"This is goodbye, then."

"We didn't say goodbye the last time."

In a natural enough motion, Michael extended his hand.

Lincoln shook it, and thought that this should feel strange, was a little upset to find it didn't.

"Be careful," Lincoln said.

"I'll do my best."

Michael grabbed a small bag from the kitchen floor that had been concealed from Lincoln's eyes till then. He hadn't realized his brother had been packing – thought that, anyway, there was little to pack.

Michael put a set of keys on the counter.

"You can have them stay here. The man Sucre and his girl, I mean. I trust them with the place. We've been getting to know each other through emails for a long time."

"Yeah. Whatever you like."

Lincoln was a little stunned to think his brother was actually going to leave him, here, in his own apartment.

Michael seemed to sense the oddness of it and added, "You know you don't have to do this, right?"

"Hey, helping strangers' my favorite pastime."

"I don't mean Sucre." Michael remained serious. "I mean – this. What we've been doing." His eyes gleamed with dead seriousness. "This doesn't have to be your life. You don't have to enslave yourself trying to pay back some sort of debt to me, Linc. You know that?"

Lincoln didn't answer.

Didn't say that, of course, he did, or that he formally declined his brother's permission that allowed him to have his life.

"Don't worry about me," Lincoln said. "Just do what you have to. I'll keep the city warm for you."

Again, he could sense the joke was lost on Michael.

The door closed shut behind the younger brother and Lincoln felt slightly surreal, for a moment, with his hands in his pockets, alone in the apartment.

 _I won't be treated like this, Linc_.

Veronica's river-like voice in his memory.

"You shouldn't be," he said to himself again. "You shouldn't be."

…

 **End Notes:** Hope you all had a happy new year! Please share your thoughts on this chapter. Take care!


	31. The Government's Little Black Book

It was quite a shock when Sara actually got around to reading the notebook Michael had left with her. The dramatic way in which he'd brought it, the rendezvous itself, concentrated her full attention for a long while, so it was only around three in the morning, after more silent pacing and inner deliberations, and a long shower (ice-cold), that Sara actually sat down at her office and opened the notebook, whose black covers hinted gaudily at the black mysteries it concealed.

"All right, Michael," she sighed. "Let's see what you have for me."

What followed was an intense forty-eight hours during which Sara hardly got out of the office. It became the subject of comical allusions among her staff. She was having food and beverages brought in but hardly came out herself, even for bathroom breaks or rest. One minor appointment was rescheduled. Apart from that, Sara had had little official plans for the next few days.

Kellerman had been away in China trying to negotiate an environment-friendly agreement when Sara's reading of Michael's black notebook occurred. Fortunate enough, as she saw it – not only because she wouldn't have wanted to share the information she drank in hour after hour, even with her closest advisors, but especially because many of those advisors' names featured in the notebook. Including Kellerman's.

Sara didn't know how Michael had gathered all of that information about the Beltway – but given his brother's infamous relations, because of the recording of Bagwell's private phone conversations which he had provided them with, she could make an educated guess.

"Jesus, Michael."

Anger was notable among the variegated rush of emotions Sara experienced in those busy forty-eight hours, but it wasn't the most prominent.

Surprise made the list as well, though not the top. If reading about Theodore Bagwell's long history of alliances with the Italian mob represented by John Abruzzi didn't exactly get Sara raising an eyebrow, the records of Alex Mahone's affiliation with the same organization did.

In fact, the sheer amount of politicians, whether Republican or Democrat, who were orbiting powerless in the sphere of control of mafias or multi-billionaire corporations, was staggering enough that Sara could do nothing but digest it in silence for a while.

Of course, not all alliances were hidden, and Sara had been aware of some of them before – but the black book contained certain pressure points that would be interesting, maybe even necessary, to push, say in the case of a gridlock Congress.

Sara had Kellerman stop by her office first thing, after his return from Asia.

Maybe because of the long trip, or because it was well past midnight when he was shown into her office, his mood was one of moderate formality only.

Over the years, Sara had known Kellerman as a friend as well as an associate, but since the presidency, the former had been pushed back to the fringes.

"Well, I got good news for you."

He dropped his black leather briefcase on the floor before taking a seat on the couch – the sound it made was too light for it to have contained a laptop. Kellerman was a strictly smartphone guy, anyway, preferred the handier tools that could always fit in a coat pocket.

"China's agreed to the deal. Not a revolutionary deal, but more than I ever expected we'd get out of them, frankly. Ten times better than Copenhagen. More broadly, the whole tour of raising awareness about the environment went well, though I met more than enough corporation CEOs to last me a lifetime. You were right, you know – what you said before I left. It's not civilians that need a wakeup call. The masses around the world are well-awake. The handful at the top, though – well, give them a choice between climate chance and the apocalypse in fifty years, and immediate profit, and all of a sudden they don't seem that optimistic about their longevity."

"I didn't ask you here for a report, Paul."

Cautiousness slid like a snake into his blue eyes.

"How can I be of service to you?"

Clean-cut practicality in his tone – no mock obsequiousness. Sara could tell he hated himself for letting his guard down.

Sara got up from her chair. Maybe this wasn't such a smart move. Maybe she ought to have sat there at her desk, all the while, distant and presidential.

But she'd be damned if Paul's betrayal felt strictly professional.

"You went behind my back," she said.

"Excuse me?" Not with the shame of one caught red-handed but anger, that she would actually accuse him of disloyalty.

His eyes like smoldering coals. She wondered that smoke wasn't actually pouring out of his nostrils.

But a smooth surface, of course. Clean and cold.

"Who told you that? Was it Gretchen Morgan filled your head with bullshit like this? Cause she's been out to get me since we first spoke."

"I don't want to hear about your petty feuds. Morgan's got nothing to do with it."

Kellerman got up as well. If the mood had been anything but dead serious, Sara might have felt amused at it – that he would need to face her from an equal footing when under attack, when he usually embraced the rank of service so well. Their footing was not quite equal. Sara was tall, taller yet on her three-inch heels, but Paul was at least six foot two.

 _When there's conflict in the air, that's really all it comes down to._

 _Though there might be allies, though there might even be friends, it is a jungle up here. Never forget it. And in a jungle, among animals, there's no notion of sacrifice or loyalty._

"You cut a deal with the NRA."

Sara wasn't tempted to toy with the suspense that burned between them. It was hanging red and thick in the air, like poisoned gas, and she would sooner put her head in right away than wait for it to explode.

A vague relief swept Kellerman's face. "Jesus, Sara. Is that all?"

"During the campaign. I told you I wanted none of their courtship. That we were to get all our funding from grassroot donors, that we'd come out of it clean from owning any of these big companies anything. Especially the NRA."

"It wasn't about taking their money, Sara. You misunderstand. I don't know how you landed on this – but you're wrong." He shook his head. "The deal wasn't about getting help from the NRA, it was about not getting machine-gunned from the get-go. They've got the resources to crush most campaigns before they've had a real chance, you know. It's a matter of formality, nothing more. I met one of their representatives, had dinner, and told them there'd be no serious legislation during your term about gun-control." He shrugged. "Pure statistical logic, Sara. There's been a bill less than ten years ago and it got crushed by Congress. We all know why. Because the NRA owns people."

"And you thought you'd tell them they owned me, and I wouldn't have a problem with it?"

"No, Sara, of course not."

"But it's the message you're sending."

"Look, there certain rules in Washington that won't be moved, no matter what comes against them. You can be the cleverest, strongest tiger in the wide-world – and you're a real tiger, I mean that as a compliment – there's things you can't measure against. They're too strong, Sara. Anyway, it's out of your hands to pass a real reform about this."

"It wasn't your call to make."

Kellerman tilted his head, ever so slightly.

If he was a boxer, Sara could tell he'd be the kind who took the hits without flinching, the sort of player who blinks back the blood beading down his lashes like it were just a noisome fly to be brushed away.

"All right," he nodded. Ever resourceful under pressure. "My mistake."

"It wasn't a mistake. You knew my position on this. You knew I would have sooner lost this office than obtained it by making any sort of deals with people like this."

"Hey, you got there all on your own –"

"It was a betrayal."

Though both of them looked calm, there was a laden heaviness to their silence. They had long learned to wear masks above whatever reprehensible emotion raged below the surface.

It had been a very long time since they had spoken like this, spoken of anything but reports and interview schedules – for a matter of fact, since they had stood face to face this closely.

"I know you think you know me," she said. "I know my victory meant a lot to you. I even get it might feel like your own, after you put so much of yourself into this. But when you went to these people, during the campaign, when you made a pledge on my behalf – you were looking after your best interests, not mine. Not this country's. I can't have you do that, you understand."

"Sara –"

"I want your letter of resignation on my desk by the end of the week."

The ruthlessness in her own words sounded foreign to her. Like hearing an actress speak, wearing her body, the way it sometimes felt when she was brought to meet with leaders whose record on human rights made her blood curdle.

There were things she knew had to be said, had to be done.

But it felt impossible to think she was the sole captain of that ship at the moment.

"I'm not kicking you out, Paul. There'll be another job for you in my cabinet. But as Secretary of State, you're representing me abroad to dozens of national leaders, and I need to trust completely that they're getting the right picture."

The look on his face, somehow, was red, though his face itself was white as a sheet of paper. Quelling the thunder in his blue eyes – he couldn't forgive himself for looking at her like this, couldn't allow himself to lose his temper now, alone in a room with his president. But neither could he believe the words that she'd just spoken.

"That's what it's about, not all, but most of it. Trust. You're my friend," she said, founding no room for lies, "and I know you love me. But when we're in that office, Paul, I'm not myself – I'm the representative of this country. And I need to be sure it's getting what it deserves, what I promised I would give. It has to be my priority."

The antique clock on the wall ticked away the seconds as he watched her in silence.

It flashed through her mind that his reaction might be completely unpredictable – he could storm out of here like a witch in fury, make a scene, he could even throttle her, she imagined.

But deep down, there was never any doubt in Sara's mind that he would do the only logical thing. That he would oblige her. As he always did.

"I need to write you a proper report about my last trip. I'll add my letter of resignation along. You'll have it tomorrow morning."

Sara gave a curt nod.

"May I ask you one question?" He said, but didn't wait for her to acquiesce before he asked, benignly – innocence in its finest form. "Who told on me?"

A rock-like lump sank down Sara's throat.

"Honestly," he chuckled, and because he was almost his regular self again, Sara was all the more cautious. "I'm just plain curious. It was one dinner, almost two years ago. You can imagine I didn't go bragging about it. So I'd just like to know."

"I can't answer that, Paul."

He cocked his head to the side once more. She'd always found the habit snake-like in appearance. "Do we have to be this formal, Sara? You know it's not my style to grab a gun and settle my scores the old-fashioned way. I never was one to enjoy playing cowboys and Indians."

Yet she didn't have the slightest doubt he would have been the one playing the cowboy rather than the Indian.

"Yes, I'm afraid," she answered, "on this occasion, we're going to have to be this formal."

The smile he gave her still bore the traces of their humiliating exchange, but it was all the wider for its wounds.

"Naturally."

"We'll talk later this week, about finding a new position for you in the administration."

A wordless nod for approval.

She could feel the hate raging in him, pulsing in the flexed fists of his wide hands, but knew she wasn't the target –

She still had his devotion, as she had since they'd met.

But someone had to pay for this. Someone.

Sara took a couple of minutes to reason with herself, after she'd shown Paul out. Let him be as angry as he wished. It wasn't as if he could actually find out Michael was behind this.

Paul had never heard the name Michael Scofield in his life, and if he were to hear it now, it would mean nothing to him.

Sara sat at her desk, grabbed the telephone and asked for fresh coffee to be delivered along with some sandwiches. Back in her young adult years, there had been moments when she'd gotten so caught up with work, she'd allowed herself to grow faint with hunger, but there were different standards for a president.

Then, she picked up the black notebook, all innocuous-looking tucked in her drawer, and she got back to work.

…

It was several later, at the beginning of the new year, that Sara gave that historic speech following the school shooting in Joliet, Illinois.

Her reaction was strong, not only because it had happened in her home state.

Honestly, the shooting was only what made the scale tip, what morphed Sara's deep-rooted convictions into a fire hungry for justice and change.

That it gave her an occasion to let the NRA know she wasn't hooked on one of their puppet strings was just additional motivation.

She was in the limo with Gretchen Morgan when she found out, squeezing in a meeting just before she was scheduled to fly to Kentucky to inaugurate a renewable energy plant.

The two women were talking about domestic security measures when the call got through. The news was fresh as a newborn babe yet. The numbers that would feature in every talk show and news outlet on the next day, seventeen dead, twenty-five wounded, didn't yet exist, and Sara felt, ridiculously, that she could still have an impact, reshape a tragic event into a bad scare.

"What is it?" Gretchen asked.

"Gunshots in a school in Joliet."

Gretchen's neatly waxed brows arched into thin triangles. "Anyone dead?"

"We don't know yet."

An awkward pause, while the woman visibly waited to see if the event had definitely ended their makeshift interview.

Sara's own mind was fusing, going far beyond the situation in Illinois – she was thinking not only of this school shooting, but of the 366 mass shootings there had been in the country in the past year. She was thinking of what it was going to take before anyone seriously started challenging gun violence – and who might actually have a chance to do it, if not the president?

Of course, she was thinking about that cozy dinner between an NRA representative and Paul Kellerman, and it was burning holes in the back of her brain.

"We've made it to the runway." Gretchen noted, after a moment.

Indeed, the limo had stopped moving, but Sara had not been ready to make a decision about what to do next.

"Gretchen," she said, "we'll finish our talk when I get back."

"From Kentucky?"

"From Illinois." She turned to her assistant, always with her in the car. "Cancel my first trip with my most sincere apologies. And tell our pilot we're going to Joliet."

And it was in Joliet, on that very night, that Sara performed the speech which gave Michael enough reasons to worry that he decided to move to Washington DC.

Sara herself did not feel afraid, as she faced the crowd and the cameras, not even as she strayed from the words her speech-writer had carefully laid out for her.

It didn't matter that her advisors would go insane over this, that Kellerman's brain might actually blow up from the pressure, that the NRA would stop at nothing to end her for this.

It was time someone in this country became brave enough to address the problem.

Thousands of innocent lives were at stake, as well as the integrity of this government and her own cabinet.

Sara might get crushed in the process, she might not stand a chance at reelection. But she would not be a coward and look the other way.

…

 **End Notes** : I know it's been a long time since I updated… Life has been crazy lately. In France, there's a competitive exam called the 'agrégation' and let me tell you it's a pain to be a contester ;). Hope you enjoyed this chapter. The numbers concerning the mass shootings are valid and correspond to the year 2019. Please share your thoughts in the comment section as always.


	32. The Airport

"Morning, sir," the young lady said, her pleasant head floating behind the reception counter. Her eyes matched the blue of her uniform, her smile taken straight out of a travel brochure. "What can I get you?"

"I'll take the next flight to Washington D.C., please."

"Will there be a return ticket to go with that?"

Michael didn't answer for a while, the memory of his last trip to Washington flashing before his eyes.

Kneeling at Sara's feet, in the garden of the White House, laying before her the notebook that represented a year of industrious work –

But he was only dressed as a guard, only playing the knight in white armor who gallops away into the kingdom of night.

"Sir?"

"Sorry. One-way."

Michael killed time at the airport with the paperback edition of the Constitution, which he knew by heart at this point, but it was good now and then to give himself a refresher, to quiz himself and make sure he had the exact wording.

Meanwhile, he tore small pieces out of a triangle ham sandwich and forced himself to eat when it felt like the lights in his brain were going out.

It was only a couple hours' wait before he was queuing to go through customs, squeezed between tuxedo-clad men who carried a briefcase in their hands, and who might have been twins, except one was wearing a blue suit, the other a black one.

 _You're going to fit right in_ , Michael told himself, _and it's all going to be perfectly fine_.

Honestly, the decision to leave his life in Chicago behind and move to Washington made surprising sense, considering how sudden it had been, and that it was only as old as last night.

The graveness in her eyes, as Sara gave her speech, her evident willingness to do everything in her power to dismantle the NRA, as well as any other organization who put profit ahead of the lives of American citizens.

That's what had triggered it all, and in the blink of an eye, it was absurd that Michael was still in Chicago to begin with, that he was so remote from this woman who had become the center of his life, and all the distance in the world would not have stopped this revolution in its fateful course. Michael had switched off his television, had a couple of sips of coffee and thought _: I'm going to Washington_ , and it had seemed the most logical thing in the world.

Maybe because he'd known it even before.

From the moment he'd seen her again, last December –

Maybe part of him had known there was nothing else for him to do, eventually, but join her, even if he could never be with her.

 _I'm not going there for more secret rendezvous, for selfish reasons._

 _She doesn't even have to know_.

Concretely, there might be nothing more Michael might do to save Sara in Washington.

But he could _shadow_ her.

(She used to call him her shadow-friend, did she not?)

When there was a meeting, a public convention or speech giving, he could be there, among the crowd, watchful of her surroundings.

Maybe he would not have an opportunity to catch a bullet for her, but the odds were higher than if he were to remain at home and watch from his TV set, surely.

Besides, it was high time Michael moved on to the next stage of his plan.

Hadn't he prepared the terrain, so to speak, created a network of professional relations who were looking forward to making his acquaintance, in Washington?

Even lawyers with years of experience were startled with Michael's capacity to memorize the law.

Already, he'd made a few friends, fewer than he'd made enemies, and if he organized himself well enough, his first week in Washington should be a busy one.

"Hey, wait a second, let me through!"

Someone shouted at the beginning of the queue.

Michael had no problems identifying the voice as his brother's, and he pivoted with a look of surprise.

"Lincoln?"

He almost wanted to laugh at the sight of his brother trying to shuffle through the line of businessmen. Lincoln looked extraordinarily out of his habitat, as he used to look when his parents were having 'fancy people' for dinner, and Lincoln would more often than not be sent to his room halfway through the meal after having piled blunder upon blunder.

"I wanted to – hey, let me through!"

He panted a little when he had reached Michael's level. It wasn't hard to ignore the snotty stares cast their way.

Michael hadn't expected his brother would come – realized that, in his mind, he had already left Chicago.

"Boy, we're not getting any younger are we? You know at twenty I could beat Stu Randall racing around the neighborhood. Earned me a hundred and fifty bucks just like that. He was such a sore loser, we must have done the whole thing three times over before he decided he'd had his share."

Lincoln was bent his half, palms pressing against his jeans.

"But that was peanuts compared to chasing you all around the airport. Maybe my job's making me a little too soft."

"For some, middle age comes early."

"Jesus, Mike. Go easy on me."

Their eyes met, and Michael didn't try to resist the immediate complicity that passed between them, easy, helpless, like wires connecting.

"What are you doing here?"

"I had to see you again before you left. I had to stop by my apartment, first –" He pulled a brown Kraft envelope out of the pocket of his jacket.

Just from the way he handled it, Michael could tell what was in it was special. Not like the cash-filled envelopes Michael had accepted, not so much as peace offerings than ways of Lincoln to ease the weight of guilt on his conscience. Michael hadn't had the heart to refuse them, could tell Lincoln was already struggling to keep his head out of the water. And he had to meet him halfway, if not to extend his hand and draw him out on the dry land, at least allow him to swim his way back, one painstaking effort after the other.

"Here. I had to give this to you."

"Linc, I don't want presents."

"Oh, it's not a present. Really. It's yours."

Michael's brows furrowed. "What –"

"No, no, please. Wait until you're on the plane to open it."

He stared bemused at his older brother for a moment, trying to figure out what Lincoln might have possibly wanted to borrow that would fit in so thin an envelope, why he hadn't asked, and why he thought now was the best time to return it of all.

"Is this a joke?"

"No."

"This is the reason why you absolutely had to see me before I left, and you're not going to tell me what's in it?"

"Er – no. I just think it's better to leave you alone with it."

Michael remained fixated on the odd demand for a few more seconds.

Yet again, over the past year, stranger things had happened to the brothers.

Michael took the envelope cautiously and slid it in the inner pocket of his coat.

"Thank you," Lincoln said.

"You're the one giving the present. Shouldn't I be doing the thanking?"

His brother looked triumphant. It was good to see a smile again on those stubbly cheeks. "And there I was, thinking your sense of humor was lost beyond saving."

"Sorry?"

"Oh, no offense. But nothing but hard work's been turning you into a kind of broody creature, you know. Like these remorse-stricken vampires in Anne Rice books."

"Anne Rice?" Now, Michael was outright astonished.

If he blinked hard enough, he might convince himself he'd dreamed all about Lincoln's last-minute visit to the airport.

Of course, that was not the case.

"Sir, if you're not queuing you must get out of the way –"

"Yeah, in a minute."

"Sir –"

"One minute. Else you can try to move me," he shot the tuxedoed man a defiant wink.

Michael couldn't help smiling, although slightly afraid someone would call security. With his new job, and his new life, it wasn't as though Lincoln needed a little refreshment on how getting arrested worked. And what with his criminal record, Michael would rather not think of the kind of scrutiny Lincoln could draw on himself for making waves at an airport.

Such things, these days, were taken very seriously.

"One minute," Michael repeated, in a tone where neither concern nor amusement could ultimately get the upper hand. "You've got something specific to say?"

Michael locked Lincoln's fugitive eyes into a lasting look, without meaning to.

His own heart squeezed into his chest, at the tormented horrors he could make up into his brother's gaze. He had always been able to feel Lincoln's pain; from his earliest memories, Lincoln's sufferings had been his sufferings. To watch him be punished, whatever the scale, whether it was being sent to his room and confined there without dinner or being whipped with their father's belt, Michael was incapable not to feel that their souls were somehow entwined and that he was sharing into his brother's miseries, not just through compassion or empathy, but _physically_.

He could feel the pain, and the lashes of the belt, on his own skin, in his own brain.

"Nah," Lincoln said. "No, I think I'm just going to wish you a safe trip."

Michael nodded his head. "That sounds like a nice plan."

"You take care of yourself in DC."

"You too, Linc. I love you," he added when Lincoln was shuffling on his feet, and it looked like he was just about ready to give that queuing line of men what they wanted.

The words seemed like a flash of light that Lincoln was both startled and momentarily blinded by. It penetrated through his flesh uselessly, invisible tokens he was incapable to keep.

"Right. Bye, Mike."

Michael thought of saying something else to hold him back – to ease his torments somewhat.

 _He must go his own way_ , he thought, _follow his own path_.

Though it was true that what Lincoln had done to him and Sara could never be forgiven, and Michael had not forgiven him, it was also true that his love for his brother went beyond notions of wrong or right.

Moments later, Michael was sitting in his seat, watching as the ground outside the window dwindled farther and farther away, scratching his jean-clad thighs with his fingernails; flying had always made him nervous.

He waited a moment, after the cabin crew had shuffled past the travelers' seats offering food and drinks, before he took out the Kraft envelope from his coat pocket and looked at it.

For a flashing second, Michael had a feeling it was going to be a letter, those kinds of letters that mean more than words, where the whole soul is poured without second thoughts or self-consciousness.

Of course, it was not.

Lincoln had never been one to find his way with words, and what dropped into Michael's hand as he emptied the envelope was none other than the faraway-dream and slightly faded-pink origami flower he had himself crafted for Sara's birthday in the fall of 2020.

The sight of it did not magically open up the fragilely stitched up wounds in his mind. Thoughts of Sara's body against his, the warmth of her skin under his fingers, did not start streaming past his defenses.

The feelings were not _revived_ , because they had never died in the first place.

Stroking his thumb against the length of the rose, Michael remembered all the things he had wished for, creating it, how he had wanted to enter her world to protect her – those old ideals of chivalry die hard as the oldest habits – or at least be by her side in those battles.

Yes, you could call Michael old-fashioned, but he thought a world where you couldn't die for the woman you loved would be a cold and pitiful one indeed.

Questions of how Lincoln had retrieved the flower, if he'd had it all along and why he'd saved it until today, found no room in Michael's mind at the moment. They did not matter, as they would have only desperately tried to make sense of something which, inexplicably, made perfect sense to Michael.

Like in a tale of the old days, Michael was willing to accept a little magic – a sword appearing out of nowhere in the hand of a hero worthy of it, or a kiss that could revive a great queen on her deathbed.

"It's beautiful."

Michael turned to his seat neighbor, a pleasant-looking middle-aged man with a thick white mustache, and realized he had been smiling. He made the rose spin softly between his index and thumb.

"Thank you."

"Is she in Washington?"

"Sorry?"

"The woman who gave it to you."

"Yes." He thought of saying nothing more about it, but the harmlessness of the exchange ultimately won him over. "It was a long time ago."

"And you're hoping to give it back to her."

"In a way."

Michael laughed at his own answer.

In _every_ way.

Knights who go on a quest and travel to faraway kingdoms always know _why_ they are going.

"Well, you're young," the man smiled benevolently. "No reason why it shouldn't work out for you."

"Plenty reasons. None I can think of that could stop me."

The man nodded.

They had said just about everything available without crossing the limits of small-talk propriety.

"Well. I wish you luck."

"I appreciate it."

They exchanged no more words for what was left of the flight. Michael was too much in his own thoughts, looking fondly at the flower, surprised at the resilience of hopes he thought he'd been smart enough to kill.

He might not know what expected him in Washington.

But, against all reason, he knew what he wanted – what he wanted, still, no matter how hopelessly.

…

 **End Notes** : as the longest fic I've written to day yet, this story holds a special place in my heart and I'm still enjoying every second of it. Hope you like this chapter. Please let me know your thoughts and reactions.


	33. Retaliation

There was no suspense as to how the referendum would turn out. The people's wishes as regards gun control in America were well-known. The last time legislation had been on the table, in 2012, ninety percent had declared themselves in favor of background checks and other safety measures, though the NRA had naturally put enough pressure on Congress ( _no more money for your campaigns, folks, try, just try to call our bluff_ ) and made sure the bill died an unclimactic death.

This time was a little different, Sara thought, not just because of her use of a nation-wide referendum to obtain popular support rather than a mere poll, but especially because, thanks to what she'd settled to call 'Michael's little black book', she knew exactly where resistance was going to come from, both in the House and in the Senate.

She did give silent thanks to the notebook, every once in a while, when it proved particularly useful. With time, its inherent association with the night that Michael had visited her in the White House Garden faded somewhat, so she could bear to look at it, to have it on her, without reawakening dangerous passions as a matter of course.

And, in fact, Sara did carry the notebook on her, at all times, except when she showered. That is, she slept, ate, and travelled with it always safe in the pocket of her coat. It simply wouldn't do to hide it somewhere in the White House – anything could be found there, probably, the darkest secrets and most private actions all got scraped up in the end. Sometimes, she even thought that had been the point behind the building of the White House; to ensure even the president's private space became public, that there was no being alone, no possibility to retreat away from the piercing eye of your advisors.

It wasn't actually out of sentimentality, of course.

Sara had been busy trying to memorize the notebook, page by page, until she had most of the crucial passages down, and when she'd be satisfied with how much information she'd mentally mapped, she would burn the book, and would like it a lot more as a pool of disintegrated ashes than she did now, in its material form, unlikely to risk discovery but, like any embodied secret, running that risk all the same.

Frankly, Sara would rather focus on what she couldn't help _but_ show, on the things that were definitely going to shape her legacy as president.

"We want to be ahead of this," Kellerman told her, referring to her frequent use of referenda and especially her latest. "At the state-level, they've been a thing for a long time, and they're popular, generally make a governor look good, as you remember. But nation-wide, they're rather a different matter. We want to own that image before it owns us, right?"

"Right."

Sara thought Kellerman handled his being fired as Secretary of State remarkably enough, considering the unusual show of anger he'd allowed her to see in the Oval. Of course, it helped that she'd made him her communications director – much closer to her, to the domestic sphere where she was most focused, probably, a job he would have preferred over his old post ten times over if it had been her initial offer.

That didn't quite erase the humiliation of their last meeting.

Not that Sara could detect the bitterness, lurking in his voice or face, but she knew it was there. When you constantly deal with politicians, you learn to trust the existence of what's invisible, and treat it with more wariness even than what you can see.

That she had chosen to appoint Gretchen Morgan as his successor certainly didn't help, although he would never think her petty enough to believe she had done it to spite him. Quite frankly, hurting Kellerman's feelings simply did not feature on the list of Sara's priorities.

The reason why the two had never taken to each other held no interest for her, either. This was not a schoolyard, and she would not tolerate a player sulking over having been picked second in the team.

Whenever her eyes and Kellerman's got caught in a crossfire, she felt nothing but the coolness of the well-known message passing between them, again and again, free from resent: business is business.

"Oh," he said, always saving the information she would like the least for the last few minutes of their appointments, as if by presenting them as stale cigarette ends, she would dismiss them better and think nothing of them. "Before I forget, Stephen Colbert wants you on his show at the end of the month. I told him you'd think about it."

"I love Stephen, Paul, but this month is a little –"

"Isn't _every_ month 'a little'…?"

She cast him a look of playful reproach.

Maybe it was important in his rebuilding his confidence, his interrupting her like this.

But his face was serious.

"What is it?"

He sighed, though it must have been easy for him, pointing to the flaws in her public image when he'd had his humiliatingly though privately shattered.

"You're doing it. That thing we talked about, said we'd be on the lookout for."

Now, Sara was tempted to sigh back – she'd caught only five hours last night and it'd been four hours since her last caffeine dose.

"Yes, we did talk about it. I thought we agreed a presidency wasn't an advertising campaign."

"Publicity matters, Sara. You don't want to make the same mistakes as the last Democrat who sat in that house, do you? Fewer than ten percent of the population even realized Obama had lowered their taxes back in the 2010s. He trusted the people to keep alert and where did that get him – not to any credit for his measures, did it? Now," he added before she'd had time to open her mouth, "Roosevelt, he knew how to promote his reforms. You might not want to believe it, the way we frame the changes we bring in matters as much as the bills themselves."

"Was that a random invitation from Stephen, Paul, or is there something I need to know?"

He shrugged.

"How deep in are we?"

"Not irretrievable. Some jerks will never stop the smear campaign – there's still a solid troop ready to call you a Russian takeover and a socialist, but we won't quiet those down, no need to waste our time trying. But lately it's been gaining more popular outlets, getting a little closer to the masses."

"Terrific. What are they saying?"

"That you're a bit of an ice queen."

She laughed. At the White House, she'd developed a way of laughing almost always entrenched in hopeless disappointment.

"Well, it was time, I guess."

It crossed her mind to joke maybe she should release that secret-lover video, tame the dumb voices that would call any woman getting by without a man frigid – but even on the tone of humor, it was safest never to mention that secret-lover business again.

"It's not outright misogyny."

"Is that what they say or what you think?"

He cocked his head to the side. "Honestly? You're something they can't grasp, that's all. Hence the idea that you're aloof, although you still do charity work every month. Although you're keener on asking for the people's voice than any other president was before you. It escapes them, that a woman could get to where you're now, without hiding something, without having paid one hell of a price for it."

Sara received this silently.

What would they know, what the price had been?

"We can't root it out," he said, "not entirely, but we can fight it. Hence the publicity business. Hence Stephen."

"Right."

Kellerman waited a couple of seconds, timing his exit window the way he knew how. "If you really don't think you can squeeze in another interview –"

"No," she answered, as she was expected to, "you're my communications chief advisor, Paul." She smiled. "It's your job to give thought to the sort of things I can't bother with. If you say it's a must, then it's a must."

He smiled back without fooling her completely.

There was still something invisibly dangerous about him, something behind the impeccable layer of his polished face.

Something unhinging.

She couldn't really put her finger on it.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then," she said.

He took his cue and was on his feet immediately. "Good evening," he replied, and closed the door quietly behind him – what a tame sky compared to that blazing storm he'd let her glimpse at in the hot glare of his eyes.

'Revenge's a dish best served cold' she thought, without knowing why, as she contemplated his behavior, alone in her office.

Gooseflesh spread down her arms inexplicably.

"Revenge," she said, and looked at the portrait of Abraham Lincoln hanging above the fireplace. "Why revenge?" She asked.

Sara used to speak to herself, like everybody else, but lately her life had gotten a bit mad and instead she spoke to dead presidents.

The imposing, somewhat simian face looked back at her unresponsively.

"Oh, yes," she sighed, "I shouldn't be asking you that."

She always forgot about the murder-at-the-theater business.

If dear old Abe couldn't avoid his own violent death, she didn't see how he could help her solve the tensions within her cabinet.

Still…

Still, Sara wished that Kellerman had never given her a reason to distrust him, and put her in the position where she had no choice but to call him on it.

Kellerman just wasn't the kind of man whose mind you wanted to be constantly probing.

…

It was six p.m. when Kellerman left the oval after his appointment with Sara, and so, a good part of the day's work was still ahead of him.

On his way out of the White House, he was unlucky enough so as to run into Gretchen Morgan, who despite it being the middle of February, was wearing no stockings under her black suit, and her white legs showed not the slightest hint of being cold.

In truth, those in the team who sometimes indulged in gratuitous gossip said Gretchen Morgan was like an ice block, tough, impassive, and external circumstances simply had no effect on her.

"Kellerman."

"Morgan."

He kept an even tone, though that smile, that red smile when she greeted him was enough for him to grind his teeth.

Of course, everything about her behavior seemed tailor-made to flaunt her triumph and rub salt into the still gaping wound of his defeat.

To appease himself, or try to, Kellerman told himself neither Gretchen nor anyone in the White House, aside from Sara, could know his resignation as Secretary of State had been anything but willing.

But he'd be damned if it wasn't victory crawling on Gretchen's face every time she looked at him.

Damned, maybe.

But not all by himself. Oh, no sir.

Kellerman found his car keys, plunging his hand out of the silk-smooth fabric of his pants, and got into his car, where he relaxed, shielded from the outside world by metal and tinted windows.

Really, he didn't mind the demotion on anything but a deeply personal level. The new job Sara had found for him in her cabinet suited him much better than the admittedly more popular position of Secretary of State. It was all fine smiling for the cameras once in a while, but Kellerman disliked all the attention, all the spotlights that came with the job.

Like many others in his line of work, more than you might think, he was a man of the shadows.

And all that time flying from Tokyo to Paris and Jerusalem to Tehran, and traveling economy class at that, because Sara insisted on 'keeping things real', no, that simply wasn't working too well for him, though he would have wordlessly swallowed his distaste for it as long as his president desired him to. Now, handling Sara's image in the media, he was bound to stick much closer to her and he could keep a keener eye on all that was going on, the myriads of plots that were endlessly interweaving with other affairs in this gigantic web that was the world of politics.

Professionally, so, he was more than happy with the change.

But the personal sting of it – ah, that was another matter, wasn't it?

At his apartment, he was glad to find, among the several letters that had piled up in his mail box, though he'd emptied it just this morning, a list of the employees that had been working at the Everest for the past couple of years.

It wasn't where he'd begun his inquest, naturally. The odds that some prying ear at the restaurant where he had met with NRA representatives, not just once during the campaign, as he had said to Sara, but half a dozen times since the beginning of her presidency, would have been around, picking up enough of his conversation to report it to her – well, those odds looked very slim, and Kellerman wasn't one to waste his time on shots in the dark.

After a while though, after making absolutely sure the leak couldn't have come from the NRA spokesman he'd met with, that there'd been no successful attempt at hacking his phone or email account recently, he had to jump to the more obvious conclusion.

True, there'd been nothing incriminating said by either party during that handful of dinners; they were a mere formality. But the fact alone of being seen with a member of the NRA would have been enough for someone to draw conclusions.

It couldn't have been another client, as the whole restaurant had been cleared each time that these ad hoc meetings took place. Kellerman was a man who liked privacy. That only left members of the staff, who'd have access to reservation records.

Kellerman dropped on one of the armchairs that circled his immaculate coffee table, like a small ambush of leather seats. All his furniture had that gleaming untouched look, the look of objects fresh out of the store, his whole apartment too clean, too obviously unlived in.

As he started browsing the pages of those names, he realized just how desperate the search was – a needle in a haystack – but Kellerman was a patient man.

And he'd get to the bottom of that nasty betrayal business.

Oh, yes.

Whoever was responsible for making him look anything but faultlessly loyal to Sara's eyes, he would have their names – possibly their heads.

Kellerman wasn't a believer in that an-eye-for-an-eye doctrine, he much preferred its more political variation: if someone's going to take out your eye, you fool, you take their _whole head_ , seeing as the more you leave them, the more material they will have to betray you again.

Kellerman sighed, and dropped the document on his table; there was more urgent work he needed to get done by tomorrow. The document could wait.

It was only at the last moment, after he'd got up, and his eyes were lost in a vague haze, half-focused on the page, that his focus narrowed on one of the names –

 _Waiter of the year_ , he read.

Employee at the Everest from November 2020.

There were no pictures, but the name spun on its head back and again, in Kellerman's mind, pushing back all the crazy amount of work that had piled up since Sara had been sworn in as the forty-sixth president.

Pushing through it, behind it, getting his memory working until he was almost certain he knew it, yes, it was ringing a bell.

 _Lincoln Burrows._

"Lincoln Burrows," he said aloud

Why did he know that name?

…

 **Ends Notes** : I so apologize for the delayed update. If it's any comfort, what's keeping me so busy is an original novel version of 'Welcome To the Jungle', I'm having such an extraordinary time going back to the roots of the story… Anyway, I hope this chapter makes you spend a good time in your confinement, wherever you are in the world. Now more than ever, take care!


	34. Moving

Fernando Sucre. Tuesday 11 p.m. Airport.

Lincoln stared at the words on the crumpled piece of paper, then checked his phone again to see what time it was – eleven forty-five.

He was not the only man waiting, alone, lifting a sign with a person's name written on it. But he was the one who had been waiting the longest.

"So he's late," he muttered to himself. "No biggie."

A contrast with the current state of his thoughts, which was more along the lines of –

 _Michael asks you to do one thing, just one thing, and you've already screwed it up._

Not that a late flight was Lincoln's fault by any means; but Lincoln felt it _presaged_ his own failure. Felt he had agreed to help his little brother, because that was the only thing he _could_ do, but he had no remote idea what he was doing.

Standing there, holding that sign –

 _A bloody fraud._

That was what Lincoln felt like.

A fraud, working at the Everest, pouring champagne into the glasses of men and women who wore thousands of dollars on their backs, Armani jackets, Jimmy shoes, diamonds on the ears or fingers or necks of the women. Waiting on them, the invisible hand who brought their meals, careful to catch every word they exchanged.

A fraud to his brother, who deserved more than Lincoln could ever give back.

And a fraud to Veronica –

Her words flashed into his brain.

 _I won't be treated like this, Linc._

Lincoln was plunged so deep into his thoughts, he hardly registered the man who squinted his eyes at the sign in his hands, and walked to meet him.

"Are you Michael Scofield?"

Lincoln's grip tightened around the piece of cardboard. Feeling more a fraud than ever, he said, "Uh – no. He sent me." He took a closer look at the man – latte-colored skin, shaven skull, in the neighborhood of thirty. "Fernando Sucre?"

"Sucre is fine."

They attempted to shake hands.

There was the cardboard sign Lincoln was carrying and Sucre's luggage.

"And – you are?"

"Lincoln. Burrows."

A film of sweat formed on his forehead, and he resisted the urge to wipe it.

Only the hopeful look in Sucre's eyes could have made Lincoln feel worse – feel that he was currently meeting with a man whose problems, whatever they were, he would have no idea how to fix or handle.

"So, um – let me give you a ride, okay? Michael's left some things out about you," that was true, if 'some' meant 'all'. "We should probably talk."

Sucre nodded his head. "Right," but his face was plain with distrust, the sort that grows even in the sweetest-natured souls after they've been had one time too many.

For the first time since Lincoln had agreed to do this, he felt a little at ease.

Fernando Sucre looked like _his_ kind of guy.

The kind that's no stranger to small-time crime or shady agreements; who sat at the great table of life and played the cards nature had dealt him, and who didn't feel especially bad about cheating – who felt that cheating was just the natural resort of the man with a bad hand.

"It's okay," Lincoln said; tried to think of the words that would have sounded so right coming from his brother. "I'm here to help – at least, I'll try."

That wasn't enough to win trust, of course; but it didn't look like Fernando Sucre had all too many options.

As a matter of fact, Lincoln reckoned, the help Michael had promised him was maybe the last hope for him – the last joker in the hand he was playing.

…

The first text Michael saw when he switched his phone back on, after his flight, had the words "government" "polls" and "US" in its ID.

It wasn't the first of those Michael, or any other American citizen, had received since the beginning of Sara's term.

If you had a smart phone, you could download an app created by the government that aimed to 'keep the American people informed about the state of politics inside the country'. The aim was also, obviously, to get as high a rate of participation as possible in the frequent polls Sara's administration orchestrated, although there were alternative means for those who owned neither a phone nor a computer.

Michael couldn't help but sigh as he read, Please give your vote on the following question: Should access to guns be made more difficult nation-wide? Yes – No. Then, if you voted 'yes': Which of these options do you think should be adopted? And you were free to approve or veto all among a long list of suggestions, among which: Forms and detailed background checks upon purchase and Restricting the NRA's rights to broadcast ads and further publicity rights.

"Jesus, Sara," he said softly.

"What's that, sir?"

"Nothing," he told the driver whose taxi he'd just entered.

But the dialogue went on in his head, as he pictured the stately, dignified face of the woman he'd fallen in love with the year of the campaign.

 _Are you trying to get yourself killed?_

Was she, really?

He still voted yes and approved most of the solutions offered.

In an ideal world, this _should_ be happening. Maybe even in this one.

Was it so selfish of him to wish that someone other than Sara should be risking their lives for it?

The driver dropped him off at the address of the apartment where he'd managed to secure a room, in the nick of time, before he booked his flight. As he climbed the staircase, disturbing a family of roaches passing and coming across several empty beer cans among other debris, he repeated to himself that this was going to be temporary.

True, he could have just gone to a motel, but he didn't want to have to concern himself with finding a more stable place to live for the next few months. A room in a shared apartment wasn't great, but it wasn't as if Michael had carried anything incriminating, like his spider web, with him.

Given how he'd been living without a job for over a year, it was best he didn't squander all his savings in rent.

Besides, a motel room would have been too cruel – too full of the sweet-and-sour memory of Sara's body, of their improvised rendezvous back when she was still a presidential candidate.

And Michael knew he needed to keep his head clear.

He could not afford to lose himself in the dreamlike limbo of memory, the torturing rewind of their time together flashing him by day and night.

A woman opened the door for him when he knocked – she was younger than he'd expected, and strikingly beautiful.

"Uh – Nika?"

"Yes."

She took a step back to let him in.

He was glad to see the inside of the apartment looked nowhere near as much like a shipwreck as what he had seen of the building so far.

"We spoke on the phone."

She said again, "Yes."

The look in her eyes was steady. He could tell she knew perfectly who he was – had wrapped up his identity in a small, unadorned package. He was the guy who would pay one hundred a week for the small room she had no other use for, and hopefully, he would know how to make himself invisible, or the next best thing to it.

"Well –"

She shot across the room – it must be the living room, though there was too little furniture for him to be able to tell for sure – and opened a wooden door. Through the crack, he could see a single bed, one chest of drawer, and one small table, as advertised.

"This is the room."

She didn't say _your_ room, like she was showing it to a potential buyer – like he might take a look, not like what he saw and leave.

The look on her face was still guarded when she looked back at him. He tried to smile as innocuously as possible. "Good. This is perfect."

She blinked, maybe in surprise. Her face showed no visible emotion.

He plucked an envelope from his coat pocket and handed it to her – it was best to give her the money straight away, so she wouldn't spend the first week wondering whether he was some scamming creep.

She looked inside the envelope and again, there was that line between her brows, like she couldn't bring herself to accept the signs that suggested he was trustworthy.

"Well, I'll just go and settle in."

He went inside the small room and sensed she was watching him until the very second that he closed the door.

The room was clean, but it smelled rank, and there was no window to let the light in.

 _Welcome to Washington_ , he thought, and sat on the bed, after removing his coat and dropping his bag on the carpet.

He had little to unpack. Of all the confidential secrets he'd unearthed in the past year, he had burnt all written traces, after giving it all to Sara in the shape of a notebook. Now, the most precious things about his work were stored into his computer and phone.

Exhausted by the flight and the rush of the past few days, Michael closed his eyes.

Slowly, he blocked out every sense telling him where he was – the musty smell, the feel of the bedcover under his palms.

He made his mind black as the vast emptiness of space.

And out of that void, a single picture emerged.

Yes.

Michael had done the right thing, coming here.

Just being in Washington, just thinking that he could get in a cab right now and see the White House, Michael felt much saner, and much more in control of his fate.

He let her stick around in his mind, not trying to feel or touch her, but letting her stand there unrivaled, like a God-appointed monarch reigning over the realm of his fancy.

 _I would have done anything to save her, if only she had been in need of saving._

If this had been the time of ancient knight stories. If he had been exiled in faraway lands, fighting unambiguous villains who wore the brand of a clear stigma on their foreheads, if only he had been fighting _for_ her, he felt, her absence would have been so much easier to bear.

But she was the one launched into a battle that was raising fire throughout the nation.

She was the one being the change she wanted to see in the world while he waited, wanting her.

Michael opened his eyes. His coat lay next to him on the bed and he searched the pockets for a second until he'd retrieved the origami rose, and placed it on the table, so he could look at it from the bed.

Sometimes, it felt only like a dream to think that he had touched her, that he had ever loved her as anything other than an unreachable worshipped ideal.

He remembered what it had felt like to see her face to face, the last time he had been in Washington, and how it was suddenly unthinkable not to clutch her in his arms and breathe in the smell of her skin.

He sighed, and said to himself, "As long as she can make it, I can take it."

After all.

Eight years wasn't the end of the world.

…

From a black Sedan, through the shielding glass of tinted windows, Kellerman watched as Lincoln Burrows, employee of the year at the Everest, shuffled inside a building. He was accompanied by a man, about his age and built, who Kellerman dismissed entirely.

His whole attention was solely focused on the face of the man whose name had rung such a familiar bell, when he was looking at the employee records from the Everest in his apartment in D. C.

Now, Kellerman knew beyond the shadow of a doubt where and when he had seen that face before.

It was during that whole 'secret lover' scandal, just a week before Sara was elected president.

Lincoln Burrows had been Abruzzi's guy, but he had traded teams and wound up saving Sara's good name in the end.

Kellerman sucked in all the air left in his mouth until his face looked exactly like he had been made to bite into a lemon.

The only thing he could be left to wonder now was, _Why_?

Why _had_ Lincoln helped Sara in the end? Why would he risk his life for her, double-crossing the Italian mob? Why did he take advantage of his job at the Everest to spy on private conversations and report them to the president?

Was he the secret lover – or did he know him, could he lead Kellerman to him?

"We shall see," Kellerman whispered darkly to his empty car. "We shall see."

…

 **End Notes** : It was a little hard for me to update this fic, as I've spent the whole confinement writing a novel version of it. Now the two versions don't have so much in common, so I thought it'd be hard to get back to the story of the fic where I'd left it. Turns out it wasn't, and I'm full of ideas as to where to take it. Please share your thoughts into the comment section! Take care!


End file.
